[Joker Bat Warning] [New Love Interest Warning]
1.
Damian first met Lorca one long summer day.
Through a crack in the door, he saw a young man he had never met before, standing by the window in his father's room, wearing nothing but an oversized white shirt. He was so clean and beautiful, like a mound of melting snow left beneath the blazing sun.
That is, if you ignored the chains around his ankles and the bruises on his shins.
2.
The second time Damian saw Lorca, his katana passed across the slender, pale neck. Above the faint streak of blood was a beautiful, obedient face.
"Please use the back of the blade. Don't leave a mark."
"You'll be punished."
Damian raised his eyes coldly and saw only the bat brand beneath Lorca's collarbone.
"Are you Father's pet?"
3.
The tenth time Damian saw Lorca, he hid in a cramped closet, listening to Lorca's frantic heartbeat until his father's footsteps faded away.
The twentieth time Damian saw Lorca, he traded a cigarette for the right to touch Lorca's black hair. Running his fingers through it felt like stroking a long-haired rabbit with impossibly soft fur.
The ninety-ninth time Damian saw Lorca, he told him he would ask his father for him as a birthday present.
"That's wonderful," Lorca said, his smile as warmly delighted as Damian had expected. "Then I should hurry and prepare a birthday present for you, too."
4.
At the birthday party, the blood diamonds on Damian's expensive cufflinks glinted, reflecting the faces of all the sycophants. Damian followed his father half a step behind, looking unconcerned, until they reached the cake.
Damian told his father what he wanted most as a present.
His father paused for a moment. The flippant smile he was so practiced at wearing seemed to finally disappear.
They all heard the deafening boom from Wayne Manor.
Flames rose, and a violent tremor shook the ground, like fireworks bursting into bloom.
5.
The hundredth time Damian saw Lorca, his father had him pinned beside the burning Batmobile. Black leather gloves sank into the soft flesh of his inner thigh. Beneath his blood-wet lashes, his pupils were unfocused, yet he still struggled to bite his abuser's hand with his sharp canines.
It looked less like resistance than being lost in ecstasy.
A second before he was grabbed by the waist and thrown into the car, his pale gray eyes turned toward Damian in the distance.
"Happy birthday."
Lorca mouthed the words silently.
Then he laughed and climbed onto his father's neck.
Theme: Please love me.
