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Good men don’t need rules.
This is what Bruce thinks to himself, over and over, as he cradles Dick in his arms.
Dick had fallen asleep in the car, on the way back from the restaurant, and Bruce had lifted him up in his arms and carried him upstairs. Dick is easy to carry. He’s small and slight and bird-boned, and he’s warm, breathing the deep breath of sleep, huffing gently against Bruce’s shoulder.
Bruce is not a good man. Bruce has rules.
A good man wouldn’t notice how flexible Dick is, wouldn’t watch him doing his stretch routines and wonder how easily Dick could bend himself in half. A good man wouldn’t notice the way those tight, scaly green panties hug his tiny little ass. A good man wouldn’t watch Dick eat a popsicle and consider how it would look, Dick trying to wrap his tiny mouth around Bruce’s cock. Or wonder if Dick could fit Bruce’s cock inside his tiny, slender frame, if it would make his belly bulge. If it would make him cry.
A good man carrying a sleeping child wouldn’t even consider how easy it would be to undress him. To touch everywhere he shouldn’t touch. And then to dress him in pajamas after, so no one would ever be the wiser.
Dick trusts him. It would be so easy to use that. To take what he wanted, regardless of how much it hurt Dick. How much it would ruin him.
That wouldn’t even occur to Bruce, if he was a good man.
Bruce reaches the top of the stairs, and goes down the hallway, around the corner to Dick’s room. Dick stays fast asleep in his arms. Bruce open’s Dick’s bedroom door, and carries him over to the bed. Bruce tugs back the blanket, then gently lays Dick down on the bed. Dick clings to Bruce’s shirt, like he doesn’t want to let go.
Bruce gently, carefully tugs Dick’s hands away.
Bruce does not change Dick into pajamas. He does not trust himself. Not with Dick, his beautiful, brilliant boy. Bruce pulls the blanket over Dick’s shoulders, tucking him in, and then slips out of Dick’s bedroom.
Bruce has rules.
…
“So when are you going to fuck me,” Jason says bluntly, and Bruce nearly swallows his own tongue.
Has Jason seen him looking? Does Jason know what Bruce can’t help but think of? What thoughts haunt him, in the dark of night when he cannot sleep, and Jason is just down the hall, almost close enough to touch.
“I’m not,” Bruce says, keeping his voice as even, as steady as possible. If he says it enough, maybe it will become true.
Jason scowls, and casts his eyes downward. “Then why am I even here.”
“I want to take care of you, Jason,” Bruce says, and that much is true. He wants Jason safe and happy and unmolested. He wants it more than he wants to know what Jason tastes like. More than he wants to have him, body and soul. “Has that happened to you before?”
Jason rolls his eyes. “Would that change your answer? If it had or hadn’t.”
“No.” Bruce doesn’t reach out to touch Jason’s shoulder. He knows it would be more threatening than comforting. “I wouldn’t do that.” It’s a lie. “I’m not going to touch you, Jason. You don’t need to do anything to earn your keep here.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Jason obviously doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t trust him. He runs off, after that conversation, and skulks in the hidden corners of the manor for a long time.
He would do it, if you asked, says a dark, horrible part of Bruce’s brain. You know he would. He would hate it, but he would let you. You’d only need to pay him, and he would do it.
I’m not going to touch him, Bruce repeats to himself, over and over. I won’t hurt him. I won’t.
It’s a few weeks later when Jason starts to really open up, starting to get comfortable being in the manor. He starts spending more time with Alfred in the kitchen, more time by himself in the library, more time with Bruce in the batcave, just keeping him company. He stops asking Bruce if he adopted him because he wants a child prostitute. He starts to blossom, excelling as Robin, settling in at school.
Bruce tells himself, over and over, that this is worth it. It’s more than worth it, to see Jason so happy, so comfortable. Bruce would do anything, to keep that true.
…
There’s a thought that Bruce can’t stop having, after Jason dies.
If you'd known he was going to die anyway, would you have fucked him?
It’s a horrible thought. It’s a cruel thought. That Bruce might have allowed himself that, if he’d known he was going to lose Jason. To assault a child, and then bury your crimes with their dead body. It’s despicable.
And Bruce is angry, and alone, and he misses Jason more than life itself.
Bruce has rules. Batman has rules.
Good men don’t need them. Good men don’t have to hold themselves back from raping children. Good men don’t think about seeking out their child’s murderer and slowly tearing them apart, ripping them piece by piece, torturing them until they feel some fraction of the pain Bruce is feeling right now.
Bruce does neither of those things.
Batman has rules. Batman exists to help people. To save children. Bruce cannot, will not break those rules.
Bruce beats his fists to a bloody pulp, in penance for his failure. He tracks down Jason’s former clients and attacks them with extreme prejudice. If he can, he puts them in prison. Even if he can’t, he breaks their bones. He shows excessive violence, coming to the very edge of the line without ever crossing it. Bruce mourns Jason so deeply, so entirely, that it rips his very soul apart.
And Bruce keeps to his code. To every part of it.
…
Tim knows.
Bruce is sure that Tim knows. He’s too perceptive for his own good. Tim knows about many things that he shouldn’t know, at his age.
At the end of patrol one night, Tim hesitates before going home. He shifts between his feet, nervously.
“What is it, Tim?”
Tim bites his lip, and looks up at Bruce with wide eyes. Pleading eyes. “Is there anything else you need, Batman?”
Bruce wonders what Tim would do if he said yes.
Yes, Tim. We should do a medical examination. Come get on this table, and get undressed.
Yes, Tim. Come sit in my lap. Let me hold you.
Yes, Tim. Here’s some tea, it will help you sleep.
Dick would have done it for love, and Jason for money. Bruce thinks that Tim would do it just for the sense that he’d been helpful. Just for a few words of praise, and a kiss on the forehead.
How cheaply a child can be bought.
“No, Tim,” Bruce says. It feels herculean. Like shifting an enormous stone. “Go home. Get some sleep.”
Tim frowns slightly, and shifts on his feet again. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Bruce makes himself say. “You did well tonight, Tim.”
Tim blinks, like he doesn’t quite understand. “Thank you. Um.” Tim gives Bruce a quizzical look. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Tim.”
Bruce has rules. One of the rules is that he’s not allowed to think about them while he touches himself. He thinks about something acceptable, like nameless, faceless women. Or he thinks about nothing at all, and fists himself quickly, getting it over with as fast and clinical as possible.
Bruce does not touch himself that night. Because he cannot get the image of Tim’s wide, begging eyes out of his head. And he has rules.
…
Stephanie does not know.
Stephanie is a flirt. She’s a little older than his other Robins. Old enough to play at flirting, but not old enough to follow through. Not even close.
Steph comes over to the manor, with Tim, and then by herself. She wears low-cut shirts that only reveal that she is still a child, despite being a pubescent one. She wears short skirts, and high heels she can’t walk in, though when she takes them off she flies just as well as all his other Robins. She’s playing at sexuality, trying it on like a costume.
Bruce knows his lines, in this game. The child flirts with the adult, and the adult sets firm, polite boundaries.
Bruce does not want to do that. Bruce wants to bend Stephanie over and show her what she’s playing with. Bruce wants to take her playful flirtation and give her far more than she bargained for. Stephanie does not know, the dark thing she is flirting with.
But Bruce has rules.
“Steph,” Bruce says wearily. “Can you please stop making those noises.”
Steph swirls her lollipop around in her mouth, then pulls it out with a loud, obnoxious pop. “What noises?” Steph bats her eyes innocently. Her lips are cherry-red, spit-slick and swollen. Her tongue darts out to lick the candy, clumsily trying to be seductive.
Bruce thinks about Steph’s tongue on his cock. He thinks about spanking her for her behavior, then shoving his fingers in her cunt.
Bruce wonders which is more tempting to him. Obvious reluctance, like Jason had, or clear desire, like Stephanie’s.
The fact that he doesn’t know speaks volumes. Damning, despicable volumes.
“Either eat your candy quietly, or go upstairs,” Bruce snaps. He turns back to the bat computer, and steadfastly ignores whatever Stephanie’s reaction to that is.
He hears footsteps going up the stairs out of the cave, and breathes out a sigh of relief.
Steph’s behavior cools down after a while. She figures it out, eventually, that she’s not going to get what she wants from him.
Bruce worries, for a while, that she’ll get it somewhere else. From another old, perverted man, but an even more dangerous one. The evil, acid-tongued part of his brain tries to convince him that surely Bruce would be the lesser of two evils. He would never let anything truly bad happen to her.
Bruce ignores that voice. He ignores Stephanie’s innocent advances. He ignores his own sick, twisted heart.
Stephanie grows up, just like all the other Robins before her. She becomes a young woman, and it becomes much easier to spend time around her. As Steph gets older, Bruce stops having those thoughts about her.
Except when he remembers her as a child, a flirtatious little girl with a look of mischief in her eyes and a lollipop in her mouth.
…
Jason comes back.
He’s alive. He’s alive, and grown, and angry.
Bruce wonders if Jason could hate him more than he does now.
Jason screams and swears at Bruce, tells him he didn’t love him enough. If Bruce had loved him enough, he would have avenged him. He would have broken his rule.
Bruce thinks of his rules. He thinks of Jason, fifteen years old and brutally murdered. He thinks of Jason, twelve years old and so certain that Bruce was going to rape him.
It was because I loved you that I didn’t break my rule.
Bruce thinks this, over and over.
He does not tell Jason. He will never tell Jason.
Jason will never forgive him.
But Bruce did not break his rules.
…
Damian is a beautiful child.
He’s proud, and haughty. He wears a mask of aggression over a deep-seated fear. He lashes out like a cornered animal, terrified in his insecurity.
Damian is different from Bruce’s other children, in some ways. And in other ways, he is so similar.
Damian is desperate to prove himself. And slightly more desperate to come across as proud, as a person who doesn’t need to prove themself.
Damian is a beautiful child. He looks so much like Bruce.
Bruce has never fought himself so hard.
Damian kneels in front of him and says “Thank you, Father,” and all Bruce can think is that it would be so easy.
Bruce does not know, if Damian would hate it, or love it. Or both. But Bruce knows he could make him do it. He could bend him. He could break him.
There is one more thing that you must do, Damian. Be brave.
Kneel for me, Damian. Open your mouth.
“Get up,” Bruce says, and his voice comes out flat, in his effort to keep his desire buried deep. “Stand up, Damian.”
Damian watches him with wary eyes.
I’m not going to hurt you, Bruce thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He knows Damian won’t believe him.
“Come with me,” Bruce says, and Damian follows.
Bruce does not take him to the showers, or the medbay, or his bedroom. He does not touch him.
When Bruce can’t remember why he keeps his rules, he remembers that Damian will tell Dick.
It’s horrible, to need that as a reason. Bruce is an evil, cruel man. To avoid raping a child only because it will ruin your reputation is a sign of an evil, twisted mind. Bruce knows this.
Damian kills a man, and Bruce screams.
Damian doesn’t understand the rule. He doesn’t know why it matters.
“Forgive me, Father,” Damian spits out angrily, throwing it like an insult.
He will.
Bruce can forgive him. But he can never forgive himself.
…
All of Bruce’s Robins are grown, now.
Bruce is alone. Without company, and without temptation. With only his memories to keep him warm at night.
Good men do not need rules.
But Bruce has kept his.