Fic: "Shattered" (Bruce/Harvey, the second and last)
Title: Shattered
Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Harvey Dent, Superman mentioned
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Notes: A continuation of Whole, though you don't have to read that to understand this.
Rating: R
Summary: Superman leaves Earth. Two weeks later Joe Chill's sentence is commuted. Bruce's reactions, and Harvey's inability to deal with them, set the future in motion for them both.
Word Count: 1800
Bruce Wayne was in his friend Harvey's room, trying to study. Harvey's room was not the best place to study, as it was cramped and cluttered with books as well as food wrappers. But they couldn't study in Bruce's room, because Harvey never came to Bruce's room.
Bruce glared over at Harvey, who was flipping channels on the minute television set in the corner of the room. Harvey laughed at the glare and winged a stray bottlecap at his friend, which glanced off his shoulder. "Bruce, we've been studying for this psychology exam for six hours straight! A half-hour break isn't going to make us fail."
Bruce just shook his head and bent back over the book. Harvey snorted a laugh at something on the screen and Bruce sneaked a glance at him, sprawled lazily across the bed, his big, blunt-fingered hands laced behind his head. As usual, he looked confident, even cocky, a powerful young man who knew his place in the world and knew he was going upwards in it.
Harvey was always like that--hard and sharp-edged, supremely self-assured, never letting anyone close.
Except when he wasn't.
And he never came to Bruce's room.
Except when he did.
Bruce still couldn't believe that his friend who never let him relax, who was always jabbing and jibing and testing Bruce's endurance of him, was the same man who had come to Bruce's room three times now in the last two years. Once a semester, when the pressure from finals became most intense, Harvey would show up at Bruce's door late one evening, alcohol on his breath, for a night of frantic fucking. It was like an explosion of lust, a shaken champagne bottle pressured beyond endurance into shattering, a paroxysm as intense as it was silent but for Harvey's wild, gasping howls.
Harvey always had to be the one fucked, and he always struggled and struck blindly at Bruce's gentle caresses until abruptly giving in to a pleasure that seemed almost as tormented as his resistance. Bruce would hold his shaking body between the bouts of desperate exertion and try to soothe some comfort into his friend. Sometimes, when Harvey was completely spent and exhausted, Bruce thought that maybe there was a moment of calm in the maelstrom where the two of them could drift together in something like peace, something close to solace. But the next day Harvey was always back to being his impermeable, affable self, as if nothing had ever happened between them.
Except it had.
Bruce tried to concentrate on his textbook and not recall the sound of his friend groaning in agonized, voluptuous delight beneath him. He succeeded somewhat, at least until Harvey suddenly stopped on a channel with a sharp "Whoa."
It was a press conference with a group of scientists, astronomers. They were flanked by various politicians--Bruce recognized the mayor of Metropolis. All of them looked deeply disturbed, even in shock.
"--may have been evidence of life, but we can't be sure at this juncture," the lead scientist was saying in response to a question. His voice was shaking very slightly. "Whatever the reason, Superman obviously decided to travel there and examine the remains himself." A welter of confused questions from the press. "No, because we don't know the technology he's using to travel there, we don't know how long he'll be gone." The scientist swallowed as if hesitant to transmit bad news. "Based on what we know of space travel, however, it seems unlikely he could return in anything less than twenty, maybe thirty years."
The mayor of Metropolis stepped up to the podium to take questions, reassuring everyone that the Metropolis police would be more than capable of stepping up to cover Superman's absence. The news station cut away from the conference and the anchor filled the screen. Behind him was a graphic, a close-up photograph of the Kryptonian, his inhumanly piercing blue eyes looking out at the audience--out at Bruce--his face remote and godlike.
"Whoa," said Harvey again. "That's big news. Wow. Metropolis is going to be a mess without him. Good thing Gotham already can't get worse, huh Bruce?" He looked over at his friend to find him staring at the television screen with a strange intensity in his eyes. "Bruce?"
"Must be nice," muttered Bruce, lowering his head so his shock of dark hair almost obscured his eyes.
"What, to be able to fly?"
"No, to care so little that you can just...leave like that. To be that distant from everything, floating above it all." Bruce inhaled sharply, his eyes dark and fixed on Superman's face, on the placid smile. "To not be human."
"Hey, hey," Harvey said, sounding a little alarmed. "Let's not get all scary-deep on me here, Brucie. Besides, you and me, we don't need his help, do we? We're going to clean up Gotham all by ourselves. The world's finest lawyer and detective, righting wrongs and fighting evil."
"Computer coder."
Harvey huffed a sigh. "That's right, you're going into cyber-crime this month. Bruce, you have to focus a little more. You switch fields like normal men switch women." A lazy grin, all teeth and taunt, but Bruce wasn't looking at Harvey. He was still watching the television screen, which was now running a reel of great Superman moments.
"Must be nice," he whispered again before looking back at his book.
: : :
Bruce was sitting under a tree near the Quad a couple of weeks later, the day everything fell apart. He had been studying something, but the book had slipped unheeded off his lap, and now he was staring up at the infinitely blue autumn sky. Random thoughts chased through his mind, with no real pattern, as he stared up at the opaque lapis sky. Nobody's eyes were that blue, he thought absently. Nobody on earth.
"Bruce?" Harvey's voice from behind him. Bruce dragged his eyes from contemplating the impossibly perfect blankness high above him to his friend's face. "I came as soon as I heard," said Harvey. He crouched down beside Bruce and put a hand on his shoulder. "Man, I'm sorry. Fate can be cruel."
"What's wrong?" Even as he asked it, Bruce realized he didn't want to know. He wanted to just stay here and stare at the untouchable sky. He didn't want to hear what Harvey was going to say, didn't want to see what was on the newspaper Harvey was holding out, infinitely slowly, time slowing down to a crawl as he saw the headline.
Freedom for Wayne Murderer.
The world shattered around him.
Again.
Harvey got him back to his dorm somehow as he cursed and choked, staggering against his friend. At the doorway of Bruce's room Harvey hovered, caught on the threshold, unable to enter. "You'll be okay?" he asked nervously as Bruce moved further into the room away from him.
"Oh, I'll be okay," said Bruce. He didn't meet Harvey's eyes. "I'll be okay."
: : :
A few days later, Bruce's dorm room swung open without a knock. He looked up from his suitcase. Harvey was standing on the lintel, breathing heavily, his face filled with rage. "You're dropping out. You're quitting," he choked. "You're running home with your tail tucked between your legs--you pussy, were you even going to bother to tell me?"
Bruce turned back to the suitcase and kept packing. "I'm sorry, Harv." He tossed some socks into the corner of the bag. "You're right, I can't take the pressure here anymore."
Harvey's hands clenched and unclenched as he quivered with fury on the threshold. Then with an abrupt, pained motion he came into Bruce's room, grabbed him by the shoulder, shoved him against the wall. "You can't leave me here, Bruce! You can't leave me here alone! I--I--" Harvey looked blankly shocked for second, then rallied and continued. "I--need you, I need you here, Bruce."
Bruce closed his eyes, feeling Harvey's hand pinning him to the wall, imagining bright blue eyes as remote as heaven, beyond caring. He shrugged the hand away. "Nobody needs anybody, Harvey. There are things I have to do. You can't follow me there." He felt the weight of the gun nestled in his suitcase across the room, a black hole tugging him beyond some event horizon.
"I'd follow you anywhere," Harvey whispered hoarsely, and kissed him, devouring him, needy and desperate.
Bruce pulled away. "This isn't right, Harvey. This isn't good for either of us."
Harvey ignored him and clasped Bruce's wrists in his broad hand, yanking Bruce's hands above his head, holding him in place. "I won't let you leave me," he snarled.
Black fury rose up in Bruce, cold and lifeless as vacuum. He broke Harvey's hold on him with almost contemptuous ease. "Won't let me? You don't have that kind of control over me. No one has that kind of control over anyone, to keep them where they're needed." Bruce saw again that pale face on the television screen, distant as the stars, emotionless and detached. Free. He had to find that kind of freedom within himself, to do what he had to do. The black hole in his suitcase. "You can't control me." He laughed bitterly and pushed Harvey onto the bed. "You can't even control yourself from wanting this."
There was no joy in what followed, beyond the sheer, sharp physical release for them both. There was no solace, and no peace.
For Harvey Dent, there never would be again.
After, Harvey buttoned his shirt with hands that didn't shake at all, threw back his glossy brown head and glared at Bruce. "I hated it, every time," he hissed, his eyes like golden coins, flat and bright. "I hated what you did to me here, and I hated you for doing it to me. Every time." He went to the door, threw it open, and looked back at Bruce. "None of this ever happened, do you hear me?" He said it with the tone of a person making an official pronouncement, his voice completely affectless. "Nothing in this room ever happened."
Later, much later, Bruce would remember the look in his eyes, like doors slamming shut on things beyond bearing. At the time, however, he felt mostly crushing relief as the real door clicked shut almost gently and left him alone. He picked up the suitcase, thrown to the floor sometime in the last hour, clothing spilling out. The gun was still there, safely tucked in its pocket, deadly and cold. Bruce touched it again and wondered why he was crying, when he felt so free.
Pairing: Bruce Wayne/Harvey Dent, Superman mentioned
Disclaimer: The boys belong to DC and to each other, but not to me.
Notes: A continuation of Whole, though you don't have to read that to understand this.
Rating: R
Summary: Superman leaves Earth. Two weeks later Joe Chill's sentence is commuted. Bruce's reactions, and Harvey's inability to deal with them, set the future in motion for them both.
Word Count: 1800
Bruce Wayne was in his friend Harvey's room, trying to study. Harvey's room was not the best place to study, as it was cramped and cluttered with books as well as food wrappers. But they couldn't study in Bruce's room, because Harvey never came to Bruce's room.
Bruce glared over at Harvey, who was flipping channels on the minute television set in the corner of the room. Harvey laughed at the glare and winged a stray bottlecap at his friend, which glanced off his shoulder. "Bruce, we've been studying for this psychology exam for six hours straight! A half-hour break isn't going to make us fail."
Bruce just shook his head and bent back over the book. Harvey snorted a laugh at something on the screen and Bruce sneaked a glance at him, sprawled lazily across the bed, his big, blunt-fingered hands laced behind his head. As usual, he looked confident, even cocky, a powerful young man who knew his place in the world and knew he was going upwards in it.
Harvey was always like that--hard and sharp-edged, supremely self-assured, never letting anyone close.
Except when he wasn't.
And he never came to Bruce's room.
Except when he did.
Bruce still couldn't believe that his friend who never let him relax, who was always jabbing and jibing and testing Bruce's endurance of him, was the same man who had come to Bruce's room three times now in the last two years. Once a semester, when the pressure from finals became most intense, Harvey would show up at Bruce's door late one evening, alcohol on his breath, for a night of frantic fucking. It was like an explosion of lust, a shaken champagne bottle pressured beyond endurance into shattering, a paroxysm as intense as it was silent but for Harvey's wild, gasping howls.
Harvey always had to be the one fucked, and he always struggled and struck blindly at Bruce's gentle caresses until abruptly giving in to a pleasure that seemed almost as tormented as his resistance. Bruce would hold his shaking body between the bouts of desperate exertion and try to soothe some comfort into his friend. Sometimes, when Harvey was completely spent and exhausted, Bruce thought that maybe there was a moment of calm in the maelstrom where the two of them could drift together in something like peace, something close to solace. But the next day Harvey was always back to being his impermeable, affable self, as if nothing had ever happened between them.
Except it had.
Bruce tried to concentrate on his textbook and not recall the sound of his friend groaning in agonized, voluptuous delight beneath him. He succeeded somewhat, at least until Harvey suddenly stopped on a channel with a sharp "Whoa."
It was a press conference with a group of scientists, astronomers. They were flanked by various politicians--Bruce recognized the mayor of Metropolis. All of them looked deeply disturbed, even in shock.
"--may have been evidence of life, but we can't be sure at this juncture," the lead scientist was saying in response to a question. His voice was shaking very slightly. "Whatever the reason, Superman obviously decided to travel there and examine the remains himself." A welter of confused questions from the press. "No, because we don't know the technology he's using to travel there, we don't know how long he'll be gone." The scientist swallowed as if hesitant to transmit bad news. "Based on what we know of space travel, however, it seems unlikely he could return in anything less than twenty, maybe thirty years."
The mayor of Metropolis stepped up to the podium to take questions, reassuring everyone that the Metropolis police would be more than capable of stepping up to cover Superman's absence. The news station cut away from the conference and the anchor filled the screen. Behind him was a graphic, a close-up photograph of the Kryptonian, his inhumanly piercing blue eyes looking out at the audience--out at Bruce--his face remote and godlike.
"Whoa," said Harvey again. "That's big news. Wow. Metropolis is going to be a mess without him. Good thing Gotham already can't get worse, huh Bruce?" He looked over at his friend to find him staring at the television screen with a strange intensity in his eyes. "Bruce?"
"Must be nice," muttered Bruce, lowering his head so his shock of dark hair almost obscured his eyes.
"What, to be able to fly?"
"No, to care so little that you can just...leave like that. To be that distant from everything, floating above it all." Bruce inhaled sharply, his eyes dark and fixed on Superman's face, on the placid smile. "To not be human."
"Hey, hey," Harvey said, sounding a little alarmed. "Let's not get all scary-deep on me here, Brucie. Besides, you and me, we don't need his help, do we? We're going to clean up Gotham all by ourselves. The world's finest lawyer and detective, righting wrongs and fighting evil."
"Computer coder."
Harvey huffed a sigh. "That's right, you're going into cyber-crime this month. Bruce, you have to focus a little more. You switch fields like normal men switch women." A lazy grin, all teeth and taunt, but Bruce wasn't looking at Harvey. He was still watching the television screen, which was now running a reel of great Superman moments.
"Must be nice," he whispered again before looking back at his book.
: : :
Bruce was sitting under a tree near the Quad a couple of weeks later, the day everything fell apart. He had been studying something, but the book had slipped unheeded off his lap, and now he was staring up at the infinitely blue autumn sky. Random thoughts chased through his mind, with no real pattern, as he stared up at the opaque lapis sky. Nobody's eyes were that blue, he thought absently. Nobody on earth.
"Bruce?" Harvey's voice from behind him. Bruce dragged his eyes from contemplating the impossibly perfect blankness high above him to his friend's face. "I came as soon as I heard," said Harvey. He crouched down beside Bruce and put a hand on his shoulder. "Man, I'm sorry. Fate can be cruel."
"What's wrong?" Even as he asked it, Bruce realized he didn't want to know. He wanted to just stay here and stare at the untouchable sky. He didn't want to hear what Harvey was going to say, didn't want to see what was on the newspaper Harvey was holding out, infinitely slowly, time slowing down to a crawl as he saw the headline.
Freedom for Wayne Murderer.
The world shattered around him.
Again.
Harvey got him back to his dorm somehow as he cursed and choked, staggering against his friend. At the doorway of Bruce's room Harvey hovered, caught on the threshold, unable to enter. "You'll be okay?" he asked nervously as Bruce moved further into the room away from him.
"Oh, I'll be okay," said Bruce. He didn't meet Harvey's eyes. "I'll be okay."
: : :
A few days later, Bruce's dorm room swung open without a knock. He looked up from his suitcase. Harvey was standing on the lintel, breathing heavily, his face filled with rage. "You're dropping out. You're quitting," he choked. "You're running home with your tail tucked between your legs--you pussy, were you even going to bother to tell me?"
Bruce turned back to the suitcase and kept packing. "I'm sorry, Harv." He tossed some socks into the corner of the bag. "You're right, I can't take the pressure here anymore."
Harvey's hands clenched and unclenched as he quivered with fury on the threshold. Then with an abrupt, pained motion he came into Bruce's room, grabbed him by the shoulder, shoved him against the wall. "You can't leave me here, Bruce! You can't leave me here alone! I--I--" Harvey looked blankly shocked for second, then rallied and continued. "I--need you, I need you here, Bruce."
Bruce closed his eyes, feeling Harvey's hand pinning him to the wall, imagining bright blue eyes as remote as heaven, beyond caring. He shrugged the hand away. "Nobody needs anybody, Harvey. There are things I have to do. You can't follow me there." He felt the weight of the gun nestled in his suitcase across the room, a black hole tugging him beyond some event horizon.
"I'd follow you anywhere," Harvey whispered hoarsely, and kissed him, devouring him, needy and desperate.
Bruce pulled away. "This isn't right, Harvey. This isn't good for either of us."
Harvey ignored him and clasped Bruce's wrists in his broad hand, yanking Bruce's hands above his head, holding him in place. "I won't let you leave me," he snarled.
Black fury rose up in Bruce, cold and lifeless as vacuum. He broke Harvey's hold on him with almost contemptuous ease. "Won't let me? You don't have that kind of control over me. No one has that kind of control over anyone, to keep them where they're needed." Bruce saw again that pale face on the television screen, distant as the stars, emotionless and detached. Free. He had to find that kind of freedom within himself, to do what he had to do. The black hole in his suitcase. "You can't control me." He laughed bitterly and pushed Harvey onto the bed. "You can't even control yourself from wanting this."
There was no joy in what followed, beyond the sheer, sharp physical release for them both. There was no solace, and no peace.
For Harvey Dent, there never would be again.
After, Harvey buttoned his shirt with hands that didn't shake at all, threw back his glossy brown head and glared at Bruce. "I hated it, every time," he hissed, his eyes like golden coins, flat and bright. "I hated what you did to me here, and I hated you for doing it to me. Every time." He went to the door, threw it open, and looked back at Bruce. "None of this ever happened, do you hear me?" He said it with the tone of a person making an official pronouncement, his voice completely affectless. "Nothing in this room ever happened."
Later, much later, Bruce would remember the look in his eyes, like doors slamming shut on things beyond bearing. At the time, however, he felt mostly crushing relief as the real door clicked shut almost gently and left him alone. He picked up the suitcase, thrown to the floor sometime in the last hour, clothing spilling out. The gun was still there, safely tucked in its pocket, deadly and cold. Bruce touched it again and wondered why he was crying, when he felt so free.