I kissed him only once, through the cowl. It was over Barbara. There are many things we share: a sense of justice; the city streets we stretch between us like a rope; and her. My little girl. We have both fathered her, in a way, bringing her up together all unknown to one another.

When she was shot, he came to me. By now the game was up, she had told me everything that was hers to tell. I was too numb to know what to do. I thought I might curse at him, or shoot him, or refuse to speak. But when he came to me, he said nothing; he stood before me and I saw that he was crying.

And it seemed that I should comfort him.

A moment of madness, bending my mouth to that mouth. Perhaps I saw the man beneath the cowl, for once. Maybe in his grief he became a man to me. Just a man in a uniform, crying over his daughter.

That was it. We held the kiss, and then I leaned back and closed my eyes, thinking of what to say. When I opened them, of course, he was gone.

It never happened again.

Then one night, years later, I woke up thirsty in the night. Standing at the kitchen tap, the water running over my hands, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but it wasn't fear; it was alertness. I carried the glass of water back to bed and put it down on the nightstand. As I straightened up I felt a man's hand on the small of my back.

I stood still. The cop-brain looked for a weapon, ran through my list of enemies. Then I heard that voice, so familiar, speaking behind my ear.

"Don't turn around."

So this was it, I thought. After so many years. My bedroom has a fire-escape under the window. Some nights, I used to lie in bed wondering why he never used it. I used to picture a familiar shadow on the ledge, opening the window, the glass sliding up. I wondered what we would say to each other. How he would taste.

I leaned back slightly into his touch. "I won't." There was silence. He didn't move, so I said, "Tell me what you need."

He took a breath then, and that hand slid around to the front of me, caressed me. He said my name: "Jim." And I panicked, a little. "How do you know I want this?" I asked.

"I don't," he said.

He stepped in then to stand full-length against me. We are both tall men, though he seems taller. I took a sharp breath. "Let me turn around," I said. "Let me touch you." He shook his head against the nape of my neck. "It has to be like this."

"Don't you trust me already?" Knowing this had nothing to do with trust -- and everything to do with him. He's a strange man. He has peculiarities and deep compulsions, deep furrows of the mind from which he cannot break free. I don't know what it would do to him to have me look him in the face.

"Please," he said. He had never spoken that word to me before, and the tenderness of it caught me, raised a shiver in me from belly to throat. "It needs to be this way for me. Please, Jim."

I nodded and felt a hot mouth open on the back of my neck. He wouldn't let me turn to him, so I reached back instead. My fingers caught behind his thighs and he made a deep noise -- almost a growl -- and swayed into my touch. He had his hand in my pajama bottoms, wrapped around me. I looked down. His hand was square and blunt-fingered, the pads calloused and scarred.

It was so shocking to see even this much of him, and for an instant I wondered who this stranger was who was touching me so intimately. Then the voice again, the voice I knew:

"On the bed."

I took the step forward, leaving his body behind. I knelt in the center of my bed, where I had left the covers pulled back. "You need this," I said. "Has something happened? You can tell me."

He hadn't moved to follow me -- his voice came from a few feet away. "It's not important. I need you." And that was so heady, so delicious to have this man of pure power and darkness, to have him needing *me*, that I didn't ask any more.

He was on me in an instant. Strong arms wrapped around me, pulling my pajamas down around my hips. I struggled out of them while he touched his mouth to the join of my shoulder and ran his hands up to my chest. It had been a long time since I had been with a man. For a long time he has been the only man I wanted.

My legs began to shake, and he knelt behind me and pulled me back onto his body, held me up. The Batman's legs do not give out on him, I thought, and I wished he could allow himself at least that much weakness. I wished he would let me turn around and do this properly, give me a chance to put a tremble into those flanks. But he was iron and steel, hot against me. His arms were lightly hairy; more scars. For a moment he simply held me against him, until the strenght of those hands was more than I could bear.

He was naked against me and his penis was hot against the small of my back. I pressed back into him. He touched my balls, the inner slopes of my thighs, and then moved down.

I made a noise.

He rested his head against my shoulder. Bangs brushed my skin. He began the process of preparing me; I was staring ahead, at the green glow of the digital clock, the utterly normal array of my lonely bedroom.Then the Batman put a warm finger into me. I closed my eyes.

When he came into me, I was panting. I'm an old man; no one had touched me like this in a long time. It had been women or nothing since Sarah left. He had one arm cupped around me, the other across my shoulders. He was kissing my shoulder, the side of my face. I brought up a hand as he began to thrust, and tentatively touched one finger to his forehead.

He paused for a moment. Held his breath. I traced the finger down, across the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, to the thin lips which were the only part of him I had known, before tonight. He has a mouth like a knife, like a straight line. I traced that line until he opened and took me in and I felt with my fingertip the softness of him, the warmth. The inside of the Batman, where he is tender to the touch. I took my finger from his mouth and wrapped it around the back of his neck; he wears his hair clipped short in back. I wanted to kiss him but I didn't want to scare him, so with my other hand I brought his hand up from where it encircled me and put it to my mouth.

Now he began to tremble, and feeling that tremor I was nearly undone. He held me to him tighter and said my name. Then he seized up and I knew was what coming. He put his hand back on me and I thrust into him, and he into me; and when he came and went limp I finished myself with only a touch.

The next thing I remember was his voice again, against my back. "Don't say anything."

And then he told me. About the child he'd lost. I lay still and let him tell me everything; it had happened far from Gotham. It had happened a week ago. As he spoke I sensed again the cavern in his soul, and felt the stupidity of thinking I would ever be man enough to fill that void, that howling crater. I still don't know what happened to him to make him that way. He's never told me.

I lay still, prone, listening to his voice. I don't remember when he fell silent, or when he left. In the morning there were only the marks on my body to prove he had been there.

The next time I saw him he was cloaked and cowled, more demon than man. He's never come to me again. I did as he told me and never said anything.

I thought about it, though, for a long time: turning on the signal, calling him to me. But the time was never right, or maybe I never got the nerve. He has a new Robin now, and I have Sarah again, back in my city and my life.

That's the way things go in Gotham: we fight and fight, but nothing ever changes.