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A shriek rocked through the circle, piercing the velvet veil of darkness that surrounded them, and Batman shook himself out of his meditation, standing in one fluid motion, ready to face the threat.
Except the scream wasn’t a scream. Bruce knew screams, and this one was… wrong. John Constantine stood in the center of the circle, and then-- then he went limp. It was eerie, and drove home for Bruce the idea that magic was not trustworthy.
Bruce took a step forward and caught the other man against his chest, only to realize that he wasn’t entirely limp; his hand was held aloft, as if he was being dragged forward and, as Bruce watched, it went aflame. Bruce utterly despised magic.
If the battle they were fighting hadn’t been entirely magical in nature, or if Constantine had given him any sort of warning that this might happen, or that anything might go wrong, well…
Well, he probably would have agreed anyway. The night terrors were starting to wear, and Gotham was an unstable morass of fear in ways that it usually managed to avoid.
And Constantine had been in the area on business.
”What do you need me to do?” Bruce had asked skeptically when Constantine had come to him with an explanation about star alignments and protection circles and a demon’s interference.
”I-- what?”
”This ritual, will it work?”
”I hope so? I mean, it ought to, but nothing ever goes my way, so I’m sure there’s some bloody fine print somewhere.” Constantine had started pacing out of nerves or excess energy or both, and Bruce had watched him coolly.
”Then tell me what you need from me. I want my city back.”
”Really? I thought for sure I’d have to threaten you. Screaming, a bit of fisticuffs, more screaming. Isn’t that the way?”
”If you’d like, that can be arranged.”
”No, no, that won’t be necessary.”
”You still haven’t told me what you need from me,” Bruce had said, biting back his impatience.
”Well, really, I just need for you to sit next to me and brood.” Constantine had flashed him a charming, flirtatious grin, and Bruce, for all he hated anything to do with the arcane arts, had agreed.
“Come on, Constantine, wake up,” he snarled in the man’s ear, and he shifted his grip to keep his head up. There was still screaming, distant and harsh, but Constantine himself was silent.
“John,” he hissed, but the man didn’t even twitch.
He glanced around the circle, but it remained the same; the candles weren’t even flickering. The darkness was impenetrable.
He stripped off a glove so he could press fingers to Constantine’s throat; the pulse thrummed strong and quick there, so he forced himself to breathe, to think.
Constantine had needed him for his connection to the city, he’d said, and he’d waited for Bruce to slip into a light, meditative trance out of sheer ennui before he’d done anything beyond chant about protection and circles.
He carefully lowered them both to the ground, settling Constantine half in his lap in case the physical connection was necessary, and focused on his breathing.
It took ten minutes for anything to change, and when it did it changed all at once.
Constantine gasped as the screaming stopped, and light and heat flared bright beyond Bruce’s eyelids. He opened them warily.
“You didn’t say anything about this,” Bruce said mildly.
“Yes, well, I didn’t bloody well know, did I?” Constantine replied.
“Are you done?” Bruce asked.
“No, no I am not. I am not bloody well done, and I will probably never be done, Batman.”
Bruce tugged Constantine out of his lap, but the man slumped the second Bruce tried to let him go. He sighed.
“More facts, less emotion,” he said. “What happened.”
“Well, there’s good news, and there’s not so good news.”
Bruce arched an eyebrow.
“You know it’s really quite creepy when you do that without the cowl? Very intimidating. I think I may have soiled myself just there.”
“Good news first,” Bruce said, caving to the man’s pointless games.
“Really? The good news? But you’re Batman, the Dark Knight of Gotham; you’re supposed to say ’There is no good news’.” The last was said in a gravely imitation of Batman’s trademark snarl.
“What can I say; I’m secretly an optimist.”
“Well, the good news is, the wards in this room are holding and I didn’t die?”
“That’s the good news.”
“Well, yes?”
Bruce arched his other eyebrow. Constantine scrambled clumsily across the circle until he was as far away as he could get without entering the darkness.
“Before I tell you this I’d like to reiterate my earlier point about not leaving the circle if I don’t make a door for you, and you’re very-- you. It would take a great deal of energy to create a door for you, and we have much better things to focus my attention on right now, right?”
“Obviously.”
Constantine visibly swallowed, then ran both hands through his hair.
“I’m out of energy,” he said, with the air of a great confession. “It’s… bad.”
“I can see this,” Bruce replied. He tried for the gentle tone he’d heard others use with skittish animals, but trying to view Constantine as someone who needed gentleness was nearly impossible, and even if he could manage to hold the image long enough to act on it, his usual reaction to skittishness was to call one of the others and have them handle it.
“There’s a couple of solutions I can go for, but they’re all-- I mean, I could use blood, or if you knew what you were doing, I could probably just hold hands with you and sing kumbaya and have results. But, well. You’re you.”
“Blood?” Bruce asked.
“Ugh, no, I wasn’t serious, I’m not using human blood because of some stupid misstep on my part. I overreached, not you.”
“Then what?”
“Easiest thing? Sex magic,” he admitted. “And it has to be with you. I didn’t know!” he blurted, clumsily and with too much self-loathing. It was honestly exhausting just listening to him. Bruce entertained the idea of gagging him for several moments, and then he realized that the man was curled in on himself and had tilted his face so a direct blow wouldn’t break his nose or his jaw.
“If I hit you from that angle, I would fracture your orbital bone,” Bruce said calmly.
“I would have warned you if I’d known how expensive this would be, that much is certain, and I might have hunted down that Oracle bird and asked her instead. The city isn’t hers, but she knows the pulse of it well enough. Or, who’s the one you won’t lock up properly? The drug lord with the guns and the broken soul, what’s his name. He’d have been up for it a bit, I wager. Might be a smidge young for me, but all in the name of saving this city, right? Gotham may belong to you, but he belongs to Gotham, blood and body and soul. Part of why it’s broken, I imagine. I mean, you have seen the city, right?”
“You are not having sex with the Red Hood,” Bruce said with a levelness he did not feel. He left the mention of Barbara alone, because Barbara could make her own decisions about whom she slept with.
“No, I know. That’s what I’m saying, Batman; I’ve got to have sex with you.”
Bruce eyed the darkness, and it felt eerily nearer, closer, darker. He shivered unaccountably.
“Yeah, that, no, you aren’t imagining that. I need-- I’m sorry. Look, we can’t just sit here or--”
Bruce leaned across the center of the circle and hauled Constantine in to cut him off with a kiss. He kept it gentle, because he had more constructive uses for the energy it would take to bite, to draw the blood he craved to see.
His desire to see John Constantine bloody and bruised was not entirely healthy.
“What else,” Bruce said. “Don’t ramble,” he added, though he doubted it would stop him.
“I can’t come,” Constantine said. “You have to, I can’t; it’s like a cheque register, all about keeping the balances in the right direction.”
“Hm,” Bruce said. He didn’t like that; he didn’t like his sexual interactions to be inequal. Magic. “And if I don’t consent.”
“Well, I open you a door, of course. You leave. You send your little baby bird out to flush Ra’s al Ghul or someone else from their den, and you fix this another way.”
“I notice a sudden and obvious lack of you in that plan.”
“Well, I can get you out without harm, I’m pretty sure, though the opportunity is fast dwindling. But I wouldn’t be able to get me out. Fair enough though; it was my stupid idea. Okay, well, go stand in the north-eastern corner and think happy thoughts. Or less unhappy thoughts, at least.”
“No,” Batman growled.
“Well I know it’s circle and it hasn’t got any corners, but if this is going to happen, then I need it to happen quickly, go on, stop arguing. Ra’s is a tosser though, I hope you know that.”
“You can’t even sit up on your own,” Bruce replied. “If you think I will allow your pointless self sacrifice, you’re wrong.”
“I’m… wrong. Well. I don’t know how you propose we get out of--”
Bruce kissed him again, and this time Constantine kissed back. He leaned into Bruce greedily, licking clumsily into his mouth and whining.
Bruce carefully pulled back, just far enough that he could speak. “Are you okay?”
“Am I-- Bollocks, Batman--
“Bruce,” he interrupted. “You know my name.”
“There’s a certain power in names and in knowing names,” Constantine mentioned, apropos of nothing. “And your name is Batman.”
“Not always.”
Constantine’s eyes narrowed, and Bruce considered that he might, possibly, justifiably call himself a detective. “No, not always. Well then, Bruce, what’s your pleasure?”
“You answering my questions. Concisely.”
“I’m fine, okay?”
“You’re not-- you aren’t acting fine.”
Constantine shoved weakly at Bruce, and Bruce obligingly allowed himself to be moved.
“Whatever it is that’s causing the night terrors, it’s strong, and it knows it’s got me.” Constantine whispered. The darkness pulsed.
“Okay,” Bruce replied.
“Okay?” Constantine demanded. “It is far from okay. I don’t think I can get you out if you wait any longer, now will you please go stand in the northeast corner, you insufferable prick?”
“No,” Bruce repeated. “Come here. I am going to undress you and you are going to explain, as briefly as possibly, why this will work.” It was a useful exercise, and he’d used it with his allies before to great effect. It helped a plan come to fruition, and it helped the strategist realize where the flaws lay.
“You’re-- you’re going to undress me.”
“Unless you think you can manage it yourself,” Bruce agreed.
“You know I can’t.”
“Yes,” Bruce replied, and Constantine sighed gustily and collapsed completely. Bruce carefully started unbuttoning Constantine’s shirt, letting his fingers trail across the arcane tattoos as they were revealed, slowing himself down so he could maintain control. He wasn’t wearing an undershirt, a fact that Bruce filed away. It might never be useful later, but that hardly mattered now. Constantine shivered and the candles flickered and went dim.
“It’s the same reason I needed you in the circle. Being near you is like-- and I can’t believe Zatanna never told you-- it’s like standing under an umbrella in a downpour. You’re solid and cold and smooth among the chaos, and it’s especially potent here, under the train station.”
“Why,” Bruce asked, even as he carefully slid the leather of Constantine’s belt free of his slacks. They were creased and smudged with the filth of Gotham, and Bruce flicked the top button open, then the second, then the third. Another small detail to be considered later.
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s likely due to a combination of your connection to Gotham and your almost obscene self-discipline. It’s unfair really. You barely believe in the arcane, and you’re better suited for it than anyone I know. You’re so… orderly.”
Bruce huffed out a slight laugh, and carefully lifted Constantine’s shoulders to he could strip off coat and shirt, folding them neatly and setting them aside, trying to avoid covering the painted runes of the circle.
“See? That, right there, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“I should think chaos would be more useful.” He carefully cupped Constantine’s cheek and kissed him again, and Constantine opened up for him, warm and welcoming and wild.
He drew back again, leaving the man panting.
“What will this achieve?” Bruce asked.
“Power. Sex has power; it’s-- it’s like nothing else in this world or any other. Even the least sensitive idiot has figured that much out.”
Shoes, socks, slacks, and Constantine wore briefs whose elastic was fraying. Bruce considered that, frowning.
“Look, I’ll wager you’ve done this with women, and I’ve got to tell you, from your end? It’s all pretty much the same. No need to freak out because I’ve got a few extra accessories.”
Bruce snorted. “I’ve had intercourse with other men.”
“Hah, Chas owes me a tenner, wilya believe that?”
Bruce took off his other glove and set his utility belt aside. He reflected that his self-discipline was not as solid as Constantine seemed to believe, because he knew exactly which pieces to strip from his armor to facilitate this… this.
“I’m really going to have sex with Batman,” Constantine said thinly. Bruce kissed him again, because he couldn’t do this if he kept talking.
He thumbed open his utility belt and withdrew a condom and sexual lubricant.
“Hmm, kinky,” Constantine said.
Ignoring him, Bruce said, “Would you prefer to be on your knees or face to face for this.”
“Well, if it’s my one shot with Batman--sorry, Bruce Wayne--then I’m going to have to insist on face to face.”
“Meaning,” Bruce said, smiling slightly, “that you’re not sure you can support your weight.”
“So clever too, aren’t you, Sunshine?”
Bruce did his best to stay gentle. He could feel the surprise in the sudden ratcheting tension in Constantine’s body, in the way he forced himself to relax again, in the soft panting breaths that ruffled Bruce’s hair.
“I told you,” Bruce said, deciding mid-sentence to kiss him again, a fleeting, teasing brush of lips against lips, “This isn’t my first time.”
He angled them both so they’d be comfortable while he pressed his fingers up and into that impossible heat, so he could keep kissing the other man. He liked the way John Constantine kissed; he kissed like he was dying, damned, and he kissed like he wanted nothing more than the connection of the kiss, the intimacy of sharing breath and space. He kissed like he ached for it, and Bruce was intimately familiar with that ache, the cold that couldn’t be filled by girls whose names he couldn’t remember, no matter how hard he tried.
Bruce kissed him back like this wasn’t a favor, like it wasn’t survival in a darkening circle in an abandoned level of his grandfather’s train station.
Constantine was hard and hot against Bruce’s hip, and that surprised him; Bruce had had a choice; Constantine had not, not if he wanted to live, and Bruce wanted to work his way down John’s chest, licking and biting and covering those tattoos with marks he understood, pain and sex and the world of the profane. He wanted to suck him and possibly silence him, or at the very least reduce him to incoherent, genuine noise, but he didn’t, because he had a task.
He had self-discipline.
“Now, now,” John chanted, and Bruce complied, withdrawing his fingers and replacing them with his cock, pressing his forehead to John’s for a moment and breathing, gasping; grasping for the control he needed.
The second he had penetrated, just the head of his cock wrapped in heat and agonizing pleasure, John started chanting again, and Bruce could pick out meaning from the words every so often. Even as he sweated; even as the heat of sexual pleasure collected in his lower back he wondered if one had to be interested in using arcane arts to learn the language of them, and then he wondered if John’s language was as unique as he was.
John scrabbled at Bruce’s armor, and then his hands settled high, one wrapped around Bruce’s neck, one clenched tightly in his hair, and Bruce kissed the corner of his mouth, his neck, and rocked harder into him. He remembered John telling him only one of them could come from this, and he slid a hand between them to tease; he wondered if John had been under-selling his own self control when the stream of words barely even faltered.
Bruce bit at his neck, stopping only once he tasted blood, and John’s voice seemed tangible, echoing around them, forcing the darkness to recede, and the candles burned hot and bright again, and Bruce panted into broken skin and wondered if he needed to hold off his own orgasm or if it didn’t matter.
Except apparently it did, because John arched up beneath him and shouted a single word, and Bruce’s pleasure came tearing from him, his back arching hard under the onslaught, nails scrabbling against the filthy floor, vision white.
When he could breathe again, the room was ordinary: the circle of runes and candlelight an absurd construction in a disused train tunnel. John was panting hard beneath him, and, when Bruce carefully pulled back and separated them, still aroused. Bruce huffed, and reached for him, but John’s hand shot out and caught his wrist.
“Not yet, Sunshine, not here.”
Bruce nodded and drew away. He handed John his clothing first, then started to refasten his armor.
“I honestly cannot believe that you carry condoms in your utility belt. I’ll likely never be able to look at it the same way after this.”
“On the other hand, I am unsurprised at your ability to continue talking the entire time you are having sex.”
“Where’s my tie?” John asked, glancing around the floor and then outside the circle. Bruce held it up and waved it slightly. “Oh, thanks, sunshine. It’s been fun, but--”
Bruce snatched it back at the last second and tucked it away in his utility belt.
“That’s-- what do you even want that for? You’re Bruce motherfucking Wayne. You probably have better rags to shine your shoes with.”
“As a gag,” Bruce said.
“Oh, well. You don’t--you don’t already have something in there for that?”
“Nothing I’d be willing to inflict on you,” Bruce replied.
“Oh, well, that makes-- wait, what?.”
“I don’t have sex like this,” Bruce explained.
“Well, I’d say that was a lie. You were fantastic, if you’re concerned about that.”
Bruce ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Things were rarely as difficult as John seemed intent on making them.
“The tower is two blocks away.”
“Yes, yes it is. Bet you could do it in thirty-seconds with the weird rappel line thing you do.”
“Yes.” Bruce pulled his cowl up smiled. He could indeed. But he had to try to get his point across through other means first.
“My penthouse is there.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. What the hell, mate?”
Bruce sighed and in a smooth motion tossed John Constantine over his shoulder.
“Hey, wait, what are you--”
“You said not here. My penthouse is not here.”
“Oh. Oh. Carry on then, sunshine.”