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Jon’s chest ached from the cold, and a lump of dry air had caught in his throat. His feet scuffed slowly along the busy street, dragging his ill-fitting bright red boots along the icy cement. Often times the people around him would stop and stare, but the frantic mutterings in Madirin were drowned out by the heavy flap of his cape. Kenan squeezed his wrist and tried to pull him forward and out of the heavy foot traffic.
“You’re just drunk, kid,” He said gently, gripping hard on Jon’s wrist and forcing him forward, “Come on, dude, people are staring.”
A woman grabbed her child and tugged him out of the way as the two Supermen took up half of the bustling footpath.
“Don’t make a scene, come on, tonight was fun. Let's have fun. It’s your birthday, try not to spend it all moping around.”
Jon snatched his wrist away from Kenan and powered forward defiantly.
“I’m— I’m not making a scene!” He hiccuped, shoving past the crowd.
“Superman!” Kenan shouted rushing forward to keep up with him.
“Stop it!” Jon snapped, sliding out of Kenan’s attempt to hold him still, “Leave me alone!”
“Jon,” Kenan said, softly, as the two of them stilled, their shoulders being knocked around by the passers-by. “I know you’re still grieving, but you need to start enjoying life again. He wouldn’t have wanted you to—“
“Shut up,” Jon slurred, stumbling backwards and knocking into a cluster of school girls, “Just stop it. Just— Just leave me alone.”
“Jon, I—“ Kenan said, as the crowd swamped them again.
Jon's heart beat hard in his chest, and the taste of Baijiu stung in his throat and lit his blood with alcohol. Another body shoved passed. A schoolgirl beside him was taking pictures of him. The repetitive click click click of a camera in the bustling twilight air. Before he knew it, his feet were no longer on the ground, he shot upward high above the bright skyscrapers of the city. He could hear Kenan close behind him, the sound of wind and speed chasing him on. He could lose him quickly above the low clouds.
The chase did not last long. He was far quicker than Kenan, fueled by more than just alcohol. Kenan gave up easily and left Jon alone in the deep dark blue skyline.
They had not been close before his father passed. In fact, Jon had only really met Kenan on three occasions. He knew of him, sure, but through stories from his father— while Jon remained in the safe little sanctuary that was being the Superboy of Metropolis.
After he died, however, it seemed all his father’s old allies slid out of the woodwork, desperate for some sort of involvement with their new Superman.
He hadn’t spoken to Conner since the funeral. Hadn’t spoken to Kara since the day he died…
All he had left were these disjointed pupils of his father, desperate just as he was, to continue on with his memory.
Jon understood the need.
It didn’t make it easier.
When Kenan had shown up at his apartment to take him out to celebrate his 20th, Jon wasn’t fooled into thinking it was because the two of them had become sudden, unlikely friends. He just missed the real Superman.
Jon’s grief was a calloused ache of a thing, it itched and scratched beneath his skin and only grew harder with time.
He became the thing he hated. Bratty, angry, and terrible to be around. Jon didn’t really care enough anymore to stop himself.
He landed in an empty, damp alley, half a mile away from the city centre. A light rain had started to spit down as sunset passed over. It was a quiet street, a back alley. A quiet nook in the bustling world around him, it was as the everything suddenly seemed to silence as he landed. All he could hear was the gentle pitter-patter of the rain hitting the cement.
For the first time in too long, he let himself breathe. In and out and in again. Relax his shoulders and swipe damp curls off his forehead. It was growing too long, ratty and knotted at the back.
Last week he’d broken a pair of kitchen scissors trying to cut it out of his eyes. His mom had found him sobbing on the kitchen floor not ten minutes later.
He remembered being ten and sitting at their dining room table, with his dad’s cape slung over his front as black strands flew free around his face.
He tried to pull himself together around her. So did she. She was much better than him at it, however.
He heard a noise. A splash as footsteps dunked into a flooded pothole. Feet, fast-moving, running. Feet following. There were four of them, their breaths were ragged, caught thick in the cold air.
A voice, a scream. More footsteps.
Jon was already in the air, moving toward it.
It was only one street over.
A well-dressed man in a fancy tailored suit had slipped and fallen and was now dragging himself forward with his elbows to get away from the dark two figures. They were cloaked in black, circling him like predators on the hunt. They paced slowly, drawing him against a wall, long swords outstretched in a dizzying sentence of death.
Not far behind them was another figure. He was lent against a wall, a dark green hood drawn up over his face. He watched on impassibly as if this act of brutal slaughter was nothing more than his own little performance.
The man in the tailored suit was crying out in wrecked, face-paced mandarin, but Jon didn't need to speak to language to know he was begging for his life.
Jon dove forward from the rooftops and toppled one of the assailants, the one closest to the man, the one that had reached forward to make the final blow with his sword. His heat vision stuck through the shoulder of the other, but it was as if it didn’t register and the cloaked figure charged at him with his sword. It cracked and split in half as it reached the symbol on his chest.
He moved to strike again, a fist outstretched, his eyes glowing red— his body was flung backward. A leg wrapped around his waist from behind, a hand came up to his jaw, two finger’s jabbing into the sensitive pressure point on his neck. He spasmed and tried to writhe away as his nerves lit with fire. He shouted and finally flung the body off him, but it was too quick, tangling a hand into his cape and throwing it over his eyes just as Jon attempted to shoot out quick darts of heat from his vision. Jon shot forward, lunging toward the hooded figure but just as his fist tightened around a forearm, a shocking, burning pain sliced through his chest. A glowing green sword caught the moonlight in the quiet alley. It had split through the S, dripping red down his chest and every inch of bloodied skin burnt like hellfire. His head dizzied with nothing but pain, the searing feeling right against his heart. He tumbled back, and clutched his chest. His hands were red.
He could not remember the last time he’d bled.
When his father had died, he’d been covered in blood— it just had not been his own.
He took another step back, unable to look away from the slice along his chest, the burning, traitorous pain took all thought from him.
His attack was not so kind that he let his advantage get away so easily.
He was flung to the ground, and the vulnerability of the kryptonite allowed a fist to shatter a bone in his cheek. He felt it crack and heard the sound of bone splitting apart.
He looked up and saw green.
The greenest eyes Jon had ever seen. Glowing and inhuman, and so strange Jon almost didn’t recognise them.
But he did. How could he not?
Suddenly he was ten years old pleading with his father not to be forced to hang out with a murderous psychopath of a child. He was eleven at a sleepover, asking out in the quiet night if his best friend thought it was weird to like other boys. He was sixteen and coming back to a world that hadn’t changed as much as he had, but he still had one constant. He was nineteen and watching his father fall from the sky and the space at his side had been empty for the first time since he’d been a child.
It’d been thirteen months since he’d last seen Damian, and Jon almost hadn’t recognised him.
Damian’s cheeks were hollow and gaunt. He looked much older than eighteen. He looked tired and sleepless with heavy bags under his Lazarus-sunken eyes.
He looked like a zombie, half dead and brought back.
He looked the same way he had the night before he left Gotham. The day Jon’s dad died.
And suddenly, the anger, the hurt, the rage— it rocketed through Jon’s body all at once. His pain was nothing in an instant, and his hands came up and knotted around Damian’s throat.
It took them both by surprise, but Jon didn’t need to think. He rolled them over and slammed his fist into Damian’s nose. Blood coated his fists, and finally, it was not his own anymore. The rush of adrenaline only made it easier to hurt him. Damian was flailing, desperate to find a way out of Jon’s intense hold. His nails sliced down Jon’s forearm, and he threw an elbow into Jon’s eye. He was reckless, and scrappy in a way he’d never been before. Damian had always fought with precision and tact.
Damian grabbed his wrist and bit down hard on the kryptonite-tender skin and used the momentum to scramble out, his hands reaching out to his side to grab his sword. It was only a second, but Jon was too swarmed with anger to react quickly enough. The green blade was pressed against his chest and the heat of the toxic stone bit into his already bloody skin, slicing another line across his chest as more blood dripped down onto Damian below him.
It took Jon a moment to realise he couldn’t feel it.
Something about staring into unfamiliar eyes on such a familiar face had sparked something rabid inside him.
He saw red.
His fists caught both of Damian’s wrists and slammed them hard against the damp cement, the sword clattering to the floor beside them once more. He squeezed hard, too hard, and felt the crunch of bone in Damian’s hand. Saw Damian’s eyes flash with the pain of it, watched him react as Jon drew his fist back, unable to move as Jon slammed it into Damian’s cheek.
And again.
And again.
And again.
“You,” he said, voice slipping into a hollow hysterical scream, “You left me.”
He was clinging to Damian’s collar, the loose green fabric now soaked red. Damian’s head lolled to the side as Jon shook him, his eyes staring dazedly back at Jon. His teeth were coated bloody as his mouth pulled into a tired weak little grin.
“Breaking your daddy’s rules already, Kent?” He wheezed the words choking on his own blood, “Gonna kill me, are you?”
Jon hit him again, and his head slammed hard against the damp cement.
Damian’s dazed laugh quickly turned into a sputter of bloody coughs.
“You—hah. You gonna do it, hayseed?”
“Superman doesn’t kill,” Jon said slowly, his chest was heavy, his fist still knotted into Damian’s cloak.
“Superman is dead,” Damian said, his eyes flashing, “My grandfather made sure of that.”
Jon slammed his head against the cement again. Damian let out another lazy laugh and let his head lol to the side. His face was streaked with blood, painted red, but he only smiled back at Jon with that mad look in his eyes.
“Did you know,” Jon gasped out, and he wasn’t sure when he’d started crying, “Did you know what Ra’s was planning?”
Damian said nothing, his head lolling lazily from side to side.
“Did you know!” Jon screamed, lifting Damian up but the collar so they were pressed nose to nose, so Damian had to look at him.
“I could have,” Damian said, “I am a traitor, remember…”
“You are,” Jon said through heavy sobs, “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Clearly,” Damian drawled, staring intently at Jon through dark lashes, “You’ve forgotten so much about me, haven’t you, Kent?”
And then Jon felt it pierce his side. Just below his belly button, the forgotten kryptonite blade sliced all the way through him, gutting him in one blow.
Jon lurched back, desperate to get away from the sword sticking through his stomach. He stumbled, tripped and fell backwards. The kryptonite seered in his blood, a thousand times any pain he’d ever felt. He felt like he was burning from the inside out.
He wrenched the blade out and flung it away, his own scream filling his ears, his hands coming up to clasp the pooling blood.
His head hit the nearby alley wall as he kept forcing himself backwards, both hands clutching desperately at his stomach.
There was so much blood. So much. More blood than Jon had ever seen of his own in his entire life. Everything was red. Everything was pain.
He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t dying yet. There was so much blood. So much.
He groaned and tried to breathe, and waited for Damian to come to him and end it for the both of them.
He didn’t. Damian didn’t even move from the floor, apart from letting his head loll side to side as he’d done before.
Then, Damian started to laugh. Hollow and bloody.
“It’s only synthetic Kryptonite, you idiot,” Damian chuckled. He sounded drunk. Belatedly Jon realised he was probably severely concussed.
“Come on, Kent, don’t be a drama queen, get up and finish me off. We both know you want to.”
Jon took another long breath, his hands still clutching at his stomach, but the bleeding had tapered off. Still painful sure, still possibly deadly, but not the sort of instant kill that came from genuine Kryptonite. Not like the kind of blow that had been dealt his father.
“You’ve always been a coward,” Damian said softly, slowly rising up from the floor to sit, held up only by one weak arm. The other, broken and resting at a strange angle was pressed against his chest. Damian was turned away from Jon, so he could only see a heaving exhausted back and a mess of deep brown hair.
They were alone now. Jon could see neither of Damian’s two assassins, nor the man they’d been chasing.
“I’m the coward?” Jon’s voice was horse and accusatory, “Which one of us ran away?”
“Which one of us is still hiding behind daddy’s mantel?” Damian asked, his head swirling around to finally face him.
He looked terrible. If he hadn’t looked near dead before, he did now, all smeared with blood and fresh bruises.
Damian turned away from him and scoffed.
“No,” Damian answered carefully, “I only rejoined the league after it happened.”
Damian hadn’t known what Ra’s and the league had been planning. Somehow, still, it only made Jon angrier.
“What a hero,” Jon sneered, he wanted to go over there and punch Damian at least a couple more times, but he didn’t think his body could take another blow if Damian got the upper hand again.
“They’re both dead, Kent. Who cares,” Damian slurred, sounding nothing like his old self, his head flopped back into the blood-stained concrete.
Jon stared on watching as Damian’s head rocked back and forth, and watched his arms fall limp by his side.
“Who even are you anymore?”
“The Demon’s Head,” Damian whispered back as if that was what Jon was really asking.
His head was still doing that strange turning back and forth, and there was an unfamiliar lilt to his voice.
Jon’s throat went dry.
“Damian,” Jon snapped, already making to stand. It hurt, it hurt so fucking much and it was all Damian’s fault. He did his best to hobble up despite it all.
“Damian you can't fall asleep, you’re concussed,” He said, limping over to Damian, blood spilling down his stomach with every step.
“Hmm,” Damian hummed back and let out another shallow laugh, “They’ll just bring me back anyway, don’t you worry.”
“Damian,” Jon choked, his body felt too heavy, and he let his knees give in as he reached Damian’s side.
Damian’s eyes were wide awake and staring at him with judgmental curiosity.
“Don’t,” Jon said in a small voice before slipping his hand beneath Damian’s head, drenched wet with hot blood, his other hand at his back, helping him to slowly sit up.
Damian let out another strange laugh, but his back eased against Jon’s side.
“Always have to play the hero, don’t you, hayseed?”
“Is there somewhere I can take you?” Jon said instinctively, “Where your— erm— people can help you.”
“There’s a pit under—“
“Not a pit,” Jon said intently, staring down at Damian’s too-green eyes and remembering Ra’s Al Ghul’s final moments of deranged insanity.
“Not a pit,” Damian echoed, his head swaying to the side, pressing right up against Jon’s throat.
“Damian,” Jon said with intention this time, “If not, I’m taking you back to the Justice League for their help.”
Part of him wondered why he hadn’t done that already. Why hadn’t he hit the little signal phone in his pocket? It should have been his first thought. His first point of contact. Why was he offering to help keep Damian from them, when he knew all he should be doing was bringing him in?
The mention of the Justice League lit a fire behind Damian’s eyes and he seemed to snap back to reality, if only for a second. Jon watched it break his resolve.
“I have a hotel in the city centre. Rosewood Penthouse,” Damian said after a slow calculated beat.
“Alright,” Jon said, trying to work it over in his head.
“Hold on,” he said very slowly, holding tight to Damian’s waist, he attempted to stand. His legs were so weak, he wasn’t sure he could fly, his whole body felt like it was being slowly pulled back to the ground. Gravity was working against him, that and Damian’s body that writhed and almost threw him off balance.
He was slow making it to the air, he hovered a bit off the ground, and then lowered. It took him three tries before he could get up far enough to safely hover over the buildings.
Damian’s grip on his shoulders were weak and threatening to slip, but Jon forced him closer to his body, intent to do this right. If Damian was thrown into the pit again— because of him— then Jon would never be able to forgive himself. He’d not let his former friend's eventual insanity be on his hands.
He landed them on the hotel balcony, just as Damian’s head fell lax against Jon’s chest and Jon forcibly shook him awake.
“Damian!” he snapped, propping both of them up against the balcony wall. Damian nodded back slowly, his eyes still shut.
“I’m still here, Kent,” He said bitterly, “You can go.”
His head left a red streak against the glass door when it moved.
Jon tried his best to ignore it, and slowly released his hold on Damian, testing to see if he could stand on his own. He could it seemed, and Jon took a long, deep breath of relief and stepped back.
“Okay,” He said gently, watching Damian stand and sway there, staring at that streak of red on the door.
Was he really just letting Damian go? After everything? After knowing what Damian had become?
What did that make Jon if he let Damian go?
Damian made to turn away and enter the apartment, clutching to the wall for support— his feet did not seem to agree with him. He tripped, and stumbled forward, almost crashing face-first off the balcony railing.
Jon was by his side before he could, holding him up as much as possible.
“Fuck,” Jon cursed, but before Damian could protest, Jon was shoving open the glass sliding door and pulling them inside the hotel apartment.
It was dark and empty, and there was a stack of paper on a coffee table, and an untouched cup of cold herbal tea.
He got Damian on the couch, or more correctly, threw him down onto it, crouching down beside him to look past his face where only his Kryptonian vision could see.
There was no internal brain haemorrhage, but Jon could see the damage it had done to the base of his skull. His nose was badly broken, as were three bones around his cheek. It was bad, and Jon felt a little sick, that was until Damian spoke.
“What is wrong with you?” He sneered, his eyes were open again, and he was glowering at Jon.
“You’re such a dick. I’m trying to help!”
“Yes, exactly.”
Jon scoffed and turned away from Damian, instead crouching over the coffee table to scan over the documents.
“Don’t!” Damian snapped, attempting to sit up and tug Jon away from the papers, “Get out! That isn’t any of your business.”
He tried to grab Jon’s wrist but Jon pulled out of his grip and easily rounded on him.
“I really don’t know who you are anymore!” He shouted, that fury returning to him easily, “I look at you and I can’t even fucking recognise you!”
“Then leave,” Damian grit back, “I didn’t ask you to help me! I’ve survived fine without you— without anyone.”
“Yeah, nice Damian— that’s the issue! Fuck, I hate you so much, you piece of shit! I know what you do, I know what the League of Assassins does. You’re fucking insane.”
“You don’t know shit! You don’t know me!” Damian hissed back, trying to sit up more, but it seemed his body was fighting him on it.
“I know! I really fucking don’t!” Jon snapped, he wanted to hit him again. He wanted to really make him hurt. Make him feel all the pain that Jon had been forced to deal with for the past thirteen months.
“God, Damian. What fucking happened to you? You’re evil and vile and disgusting— and even fucking looking at you makes me feel sick— you know that— every time I look at you I see all the things you’ve done. You joined the people that killed my father. You betrayed everyone who’s ever fucking loved you. All that trust. That love. That meant nothing to you, didn’t it?”
“You mean nothing to me!” He shouted.
“Clearly,” Jon sneered, “You’re such a bastard.”
He wanted to storm off, leave Damian alone and in pain like he deserved.
Jon’s body wouldn’t let him.
“What happened to you?” Jon said desperately because he needed to know. He needed. He needed to know what had turned Damian so vile. To this creature that killed and ordered the deaths of thousands just for his own bemusement.
“Get. Out.”
He was so slow as he tried to get up, Jon could see every move as he tried to make it, as he tried to lunge for Jon. But he was slow and injured and weak— and he was really no match. Jon caught him by his injured wrist and slammed them both against the nearby wall.
“What happened to you?” Jon said again, he was shaking, violently so, voice breaking with his intense desperation for some sort of answer that would fix this.
“Do it!” Damian hissed, “Finish this!”
And Jon’s eyes flashed with heat.
And for just a second, for just a single moment, Jon saw terror flash in Damian’s eyes. The familiarity of it— that simple— so human look— broke Jon, and he crumbled. His head fell onto Damian’s neck, thick wretched sobs wracked his body and shook the both off them nearly of balance. His hands clutched desperately at Damian’s sides as grief and longing flooded through him all at once.
“You left me,” He sobbed into Damian’s neck, sure that Damian couldn’t have understood him through his own tears, but he felt Damian hesitate, and slowly wrap his arms around Jon in return.
“He was gone— and you left me.”
Damian was stock still against him, but his hand moved in slow circles at Jon’s back.
“I hate you,” he choked against Damian. He kept repeating it until it was the only thing he could think, “I hate you so much, I hate you.”
He was drowning in his own grief, clinging on to a memory of a person who’d just tried to kill him. It all just hurt so so much and he just couldn’t think. He hadn’t allowed himself to miss Damian, not after he’d found out where he’d run back to. He’d hardly allowed himself to grieve his own father’s death, less so the betrayal from his closest friend. The two people he trusted and loved most in the world pulled away from him in an instant.
Finally, after what felt like hours, he pulled away to look at Damian, his hands still clutching at Damian’s cloak.
Damian was staring at him bewilderedly, with huge blank eyes— a careful calculated look.
“God, what happened to you?” Jon whispered.
Damian gave a small shake of his head before finally, whispering, “I had to.”
Jon’s heart broke at those words, it just shattered then and there. He screwed up his face and tried so hard to force away the tears. It didn’t work.
“I hate you so much,” Jon said, pressing his forehead against Damian’s, “I hate you.”
Damian’s hand was smooth and calm on his back.
“I know,” He said, and Jon could hear the slight cadences of the old Damian. A ghost of a person, but he let Damian hold him anyway— even if it was just for the memory of who he used to be.
Damian felt so much like his old self that maybe Jon could just let himself forget what had happened. Maybe, in this single moment of shared longing, he could just hold Damian and pretend to be okay. Maybe he could just pretend. Maybe he’d be safe for just a moment.
He wasn’t sure when they started kissing. He couldn’t tell which one of them lent in first, or exactly when he’d felt Damian’s lips against his. It felt like he’d always just been kissing, that there was no sense of time or past or consequences. Damian’s touch was all he needed, and it seemed to pull away all worry he had. It was easy to forget when he could taste Damian’s tongue instead. It felt nice. It felt slow. It felt like it was what he’d always needed.
There was a raw need bubbling beneath the surface, something intense and magnetic in their kiss. Jon felt like he was breathing for the first time in over a year. Nothing felt as good, as safe as this. Because his skin still smelt the same, his heart still beat in that terrifyingly addictive rhythm— and with his eyes closed like this, Jon could pretend that nothing at all was different.
Damian’s hands felt so good in his hair, knotting and tangling in too-long curls. Damian’s skin felt so warm when Jon reached beneath his shirt and trace the skin of his stomach.
It felt good. So good that all the pain in Jon’s body seemed to evaporate as the kiss deepened. He knew he wasn’t thinking. He knew what he was doing was idiotic and made no sense, but it didn’t seem to matter. He just couldn’t care, not when Damian’s touch against his own felt so very magnetic.
Jon stumbled backwards, pushed by the force of Damian holding onto him. He tried to right himself, but couldn’t bring himself to do so and break the kiss. He needed this more than he needed air. Then they fell against the coffee table in a tangled mess of limbs, but Jon was quick to suck Damian’s bottom lip into his mouth and bite down on it gently. He made a noise that Jon felt ripple through his entire body.
God, he needed him so badly. He hadn’t allowed himself to miss Damian, but now, this close, god he was starving and restless and needed as much as Damian would allow him to take. He needed more and more and more. More skin, more warmth, more of that slow perfect mouth.
He tasted like blood, but Jon didn’t let it bother him. There was only this, now. Damian in his arms, and that was all that seemed to matter— would ever matter.
Damian’s moans were low and rumbling against Jon’s lips, and he needed so much more than that. He wanted to hear his voice, he’d missed his voice so much. He’d missed how he’d say his name, soft, hushed like it was a secret only between them.
“Jon,” Damian gasped, as Jon slid his hand down to feel him there.
Jon hadn’t ever thought about Damian like this before. He’d only ever really seen him as his best friend— his other half. But it all just felt so natural. He must have thought about it. His body seemed to know what he was doing before his mind had. Why else was he craving this so desperately?
Damian was hard, and his skin was so so warm, and Jon was already feeling dazed.
How had Jon ever thought he’d be able to live without this.
He felt drunk on it, and maybe it was just all the blood loss, but Jon’s brain became a scramble of need. Damian was firmly planted on his hips. He must have known exactly what he was doing to Jon with that tantalising sway of his body.
When Jon slipped a hand beneath his glossy nylon trousers, Damian gasped and broke the kiss. They were both breathing so hard, covered in each other’s blood and drenched in rainwater— and neither of them seemed to care. He was simply lost in feeling and touch, and he just wanted skin, more skin. He was ripping at Damian’s clothes, tugging his cloak over his head and shoving off his pants to get more of him.
“Yes,” Damian said, and “More, more, more.”
Jon wasn’t sure he’d ever wanted something as much as he wanted this. Maybe it would fix them. Maybe it would wash away all the hate and grief left between them.
It was hope, and it was sex, and it was messy, and Jon wasn’t sure where Damian had gotten the lube from, only that Damian pressed it into the palm of his hand when he’d flipped them over. Jon crowded over him, warm and safe between Damian’s bare legs.
“Yesss,” Jon hissed out as his fingers found tight muscle and slipped inside.
“Please,” Damian begged, his hands fisting at the base of Jon’s too-long hair. His eyes were shut, and his face was still smeared with blood, but in this light, he almost looked familiar. He looked like Damian. The real Damian. Not the person that had speared him with a sword in an alleyway a world away from his home— this was Damian. Damian who he’d trusted and loved since he was ten years old. Damian who he could touch and love without bloodshed, Damian who had meant everything to Jon. Damian who had not left him to grieve his father’s death alone.
His fingers worked slowly in Damian, and he could watch every slight spasm of pleasure explode on Damian’s expression.
He needed it. He needed him.
He couldn’t care that it was all a blur. Couldn’t care if his body still ached from blood loss. Couldn’t care if he was drunk on grief. He just needed it. More and more. It could never be enough. He craved Damian’s touch like an addiction. He wanted his body more than he’d ever wanted before.
He sank into his body, slow but needy. He was still in his bloody suit, and he’d only pulled down his pants low enough to slide his cock into Damian. He didn’t care. He only needed more.
Damian's voice was high and desperate, and his hands clung onto Jon’s back with a need that only Jon seemed to understand.
And they were slow, careful. Jon’s body was on autopilot as his brain simply gave into lust. It was maybe the first time since he’d become superman, that he hadn’t needed to think. That’s all it was. It was simple. Easy.
His life was never supposed to be easy. Being superman wasn’t easy. Wearing the weight of his father’s mantle couldn’t be easy, otherwise, he was doing it wrong.
Damian had always been his anchor, even years apart, that much had not changed. Damian's body brought him back to a place that felt simple and safe, and Jon was desperate for it. Drowning in it, and content to only drink more of it in.
It was all pretend. Damian wasn’t really Damian anymore. But it was so fucking easy to forget, even just for the moment when Jon thrust inside him.
He needed this, he needed more. He needed to be safe again. He felt safe here.
“Fuck Dami—“ He gasped out, feeling his own body spasm.
No. No. No.
He didn’t want this to be over. Not yet. He needed more. More. More.
Damian’s eyes were wide and huge, and his whole face was smeared with blood, but he still had that scar along his cheek from when he was fourteen— and it was still Damian.
Jon was falling. Losing it. His own body was fighting him in action. He couldn’t slow down, couldn’t stop no matter how much he begged for this to never end.
He knew the real world would come crashing in at the moment this was done, and he was scared. Too many consequences, and too much to go wrong. He wasn’t ready for it. He just wanted to stay like this, frozen in time with a memory of Damian forever.
His body shook with orgasm, and it rushed over him too quickly. He could only shudder and hold Damian closer, grip at red marks on his thighs and tangle their bodies into one.
He lost himself for a while after that. Lost in too many thoughts. His brain sort of fizzled out and gave in on itself and he came too still crouched over Damian, panting, his hands planted on either side of Damian’s face.
Damian’s eyes were closed and he was breathing hard, gulping down needed breaths of cool air.
Jon waited for him to open his eyes, to see those eyes that had changed so much. To see all the hate and violence.
Damian's eyes stayed closed. He just breathed.
Jon wasn’t sure where to go. To return to the rage of before. To turn into sex-blissed goo beside Damian. He didn’t know where they stood, and he was only dazedly aware of what had happened.
Slipping into panic, Jon rose onto his knees and slowly backed off, trying to correct his stained uniform, now painted in white as well as red.
Damian’s heartbeat was so loud, and the only movement from his body was the harsh rise and fall of his chest.
Jon tried to stand, catching his knee on the coffee table and sending all of Damian’s carefully organised papers crashing to the floor.
Jon wasn’t sure he could breathe.
What had he done?
Why?
His mind was spiralling, and he just wanted to get out. Go home, back to Metropolis, back to the safety of his bed. He didn’t care about letting Kenan know he’d left, or telling his mum he’d gone home. He just wanted to stop thinking.
Damian flinched at the noise, but still, his eyes didn’t open. He was completely naked, bruised and bloody and laying flat on the floor still unmoving. In another life, Jon would have been worried about him. In this one, however, he couldn’t care.
Jon fumbled backwards, stumbling toward the balcony with chaotic urgency. He tripped on his own feet, and crashed against the balcony door, clutching at the handle for support.
“Now is your chance,” Damian said softly, his voice careful and so unlike how it’d been only a few minutes ago when he’d been moaning for Jon to fuck him harder. “I’m unarmed, defenceless. You could have your revenge.”
Jon stopped and turned to look over his shoulder back at Damian who had still not moved.
“Kill me if you want. Or take me in. Now is your only chance.”
Jon stared. Damian's breathing had gone very quiet.
“You won’t get another,” Damian said, “Don’t waste it.”
And Jon… Jon slid open the balcony door and left.