Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/791069.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      Multi
  Fandom:
      Batman_-_All_Media_Types
  Relationship:
      Bruce_Wayne/Talia_al_Ghul/Jason_Todd/Dick_Grayson
  Character:
      Bruce_Wayne, Talia_al_Ghul, Jason_Todd, Dick_Grayson
  Series:
      Part 3 of The_Desert_King
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-05-09 Words: 1396
****** The Loving Time ******
by myadamantiumheart
Summary
     Jason misses and Jason mourns and Jason keeps on remembering.
Some nights it physically hurts him how much he misses Bruce and Talia; he
sprawls himself out over Dité’s chest and tries not to claw at the silk sheets,
kisses the elegant collar bone of his remaining lover and doesn’t quite beg
Dité to fuck him just like Bruce always did. Gentle fingers splay at the small
of his back, right over the thin, pale pink scar from the first time Damian had
to let the man of two colors have him out of propriety and the laws of
hospitality. Dité’s mouth tastes like spiced wine and caramels and he moans, he
writhes, he lets his body plead with the man below him until the fingers slide
down from the dimple of his spine and slick themselves up inside of him.
Some nights it just hurts so much to feel the hole that is still so raw inside
of him.
But he must go on, he must.
———-
Dité is enamored with their newest boy, Timotheé; Jason cannot blame him. He’s
a little enamored as well, if he’s quite honest with himself. Another
northerner, so lost and adrift in the dunes, just like he was when Bruce first
brought him here. When he watches Timotheé slap the Prince across the jaw, open
handed in a way that must sting him badly, he thinks, privately, that Bruce and
Talia would be just a little in love with Timotheé too. 
For they love their Prince so, but the Royal Daughter and her Consort aren’t
strangers to power and the perils that come with it. There never was a fury
like the one in Talia’s eyes when Ra’s overstepped his boundaries and tried to
begin training Damian in the ways of killing before Talia had even allowed him
to learn the ways of defending. There never had been a furor like the one in
Bruce’s eyes when a visiting royal had wanted Jason and Damian for his harem.
(“I would, of course, return him when he reached majority,” the king said, and
Bruce’s eyes could have set the palace on fire.
“You will leave this land, with your falsities, with your pompous weakness and
your dishonorable intentions,” the Desert King had told the man, before Bruce
could do something that would get him killed.
And Jason had not gone to bed with the Royal Daughter and her Consort that
night, but instead had wrapped himself around the boy he had sworn to protect
and let the thirteen year old shake against his chest for fear, for even Ra’s’
actions had not proven what the two of them needed; he had not given them up
this time, but one day- one day, he might still.)
————-
When the winter winds blow harsh across the dunes, he sits on the highest
turret and clutches at the edge of the stone, looking off across the land that
the stars shine down upon so brightly. There were nights like these in the
winters of the loving-time, when Jason and Dité were not cast aside and left
behind. He remembers the first ones, before Dité had arrived, when he bit his
pillow and cried out, when he glared at the Royal Daughter’s Consort because
his god stood tall and warm like a summer sun, but he was not allowed to touch.
He remembers the times that he had curled in his covers and beat the stones,
for he knew that the bed was warm, so warm, with Dité breathing hot cries
against it and Talia rocking the mattress as she took the older boy apart
thrust by thrust. 
(He knew that Bruce knew that he had watched, that he had shivered and bit his
lip when he saw the way that Dité rested his cheek on his forearms and rocked
back into Talia’s hips. He knew that Bruce knew that he had known the way the
leather straps curled around Talia’s thighs and he had known the sounds of Dité
coming hard across the silk.)
In the mornings Bruce had watched him, dragged one sword-callous across the
soft line of his throat before kissing his temple and leaving with Talia for
their duties. (When he finally reached sixteen summers, that same place Bruce
had always caressed became the place that he always bit-kissed-licked-sucked,
the place that Jason always held a purple bruise from his lover.)
But the night that had hurt the most, the night that he still shudders in his
stomach to remember, was the night he first heard Bruce sob quietly against the
sweat-slick skin of Talia’s shoulder, his hands curled up in Dité’s and his
head thrashing against the pillow. Dité’s red cheeks, hot in the dark shadows
of the bed, pressed to Bruce’s hair, and his dark eyes watched the place where
Talia’s strong hands had shoved her Consort’s legs up, had spread him wide and
taken his power with the sweet-sick exhaustion of pleasure. Jason screamed into
the pillows when they had finally taken their leave of consciousness and slept,
tangled together, sweaty and still smelling of the sex they’d had, Bruce’s legs
still spread wide and Talia’s glass cock lying back in its carved wooden box
next to the carefully cleaned harness.
Because Bruce would know if he took himself in hand; Bruce would know if he
crept off to the baths and bit his fingers to keep quiet and gave in to the
heat, hot and aching in his stomach. He tossed and turned, the cotton of his
sleep pants rubbing across his cock until he couldn’t stand it any longer and
he whimpered into the shadows of the room from his bed across the room from all
his not-yet-lovers, shoving his hand down and grasping himself.
Jason scrapes his fingernails across his thigh in the here and now, shrugging
his shoulders and pulling the cloak tighter around him, and he knows what was
next like he knows the back of his hand, laughing out in the crisp cold air.
“Jason,” Bruce’s voice called out in the darkness, and he almost sobbed, back
then, fourteen summers and frustrated beyond belief.
“Yes, my highest?” he stuttered out, clenching his fist one more time before he
slowly dragged it from his clothes and sat up, crossing his legs and hiding his
fierce need with the mass of blankets.
“Sleep, little love-of-mine,” Bruce had told him, bare feet padding across the
stones after the large man had untangled himself from his lovers and limped
down from the bed. Jason stared up at him, blue eyes aching, but Bruce had
simply kissed that place on Jason’s temple and pressed him gently down into his
bed again, stroking his fingers across Jason’s brow and hair until he’d fallen
asleep, an hour later, with Bruce’s weight pressing the mattress down on his
right side.
He did not say anything, but Jason knows that Bruce had known; he had known how
much Jason wanted him, and how sweet it would be once Jason was finally old
enough to share the sea of sheets that spread across the Royal Daughter and her
Consort’s bed.
And it was- it was sweeter than Jason had thought it could be.
He tears at the cloak a little, absentmindedly, but the winter air is not
getting warmer and the night does not get longer than this, so he takes the
steps back down to where Dité is sleeping in front of the biggest fireplace in
the Prince’s harem quarters, his memories trailing behind him like the train of
a wedding dress, floating and pale in the moon-light-pools. The clasp is easy
to undo, even with his fingers shaking a little with how much he misses the
touch of his lost-loves, and he curls around Dité’s body without even thinking
about it, the older man nuzzling against him in his sleep. (If Jason was not so
heart-heavy, he would clasp Dité’s thighs and part them, kiss his stomach,
fluttering in his sleep, and stroke Dité away with the slick heat of the flat
of his tongue.)
And oh, he sleeps, but oh, he wants, so deep and painfully that it makes his
bones ache.
(But what he does not know is that out there, in the dunes, in the moon-time,
there are horses; horses and caravans, traveling towards the great Palace of
the Desert King-  bringing Dité and Jason their loves again.)
 
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