Work Text:
He found out later he was only in the bacta tank for two weeks, but to Niro, the strange feeling of weightlessness and the shadowy images dancing in his dreams felt like a lifetime.
These shadow dreams made little sense, too shapeless and chaotic to take form, but one silhouette did appear, time and time again. Someone staring down at him, the shadow of a wide brim hat blocking the sun. The same silhouette that haunted Niro as a boy had finally returned when he was a man.
But the one who wore the hat now was more vengeful specter than ghost, his red eyes narrow in anger. Hatred.
When Niro startled awake, he saw those same eyes in a different face, the hatred missing, replaced with tears as Isaac cried into his shoulder.
He would have died, they said, if he hadn’t been wearing the thin armor chestplate under his tunic. Two blaster bolts, one to his stomach and the other over his heart, critical enough that his life hung by a thread. But with the mayor acting swiftly, and an emergency kit at the station, they managed to get Niro to the hospital in time to keep his damaged heart pumping.
Months of recovery, they said. The mayor warned if he didn’t take medical leave, she would award his commendation of bravery, and then sack him. She said it with a gentle smile, but Niro didn’t doubt she would do it.
Deputy Vance never returned, but the mayor refused to let him worry about hiring more deputies, or about someone filling in his place while he was gone. In the past, he would have worried about that kind of thing, wanting to make sure community security didn’t backslide in his absence.
Now, all he could think about was Isaac. Everything he’d seen, all that he’d endured, it had taken its toll on his son. He refused to leave Niro’s side in the hospital, and it took a month for him to agree to return to school. Every night he slept in Niro’s bed, and almost every night Isaac woke him with nightmares. Nightmares of a man in a wide brim hat. It seemed they were both haunted by the same phantom.
The mayor didn’t give him a choice about the police droid stationed outside his apartment door. He was fine with it, and with the police droid that took Isaac to school, but Niro didn’t have much concern for himself. If the red-eyed specter wanted to finish the job, he knew where to find him.
It was as if the universe heard his indifference and decided to show him how mistaken he was.
The morning light shone through the windows to illuminate the apartment, Isaac was at school, and Niro was trying, and failing, to regain some of his strength and endurance. At least he could go for walks around his apartment building, and even up to Isaac’s school on occasion, though sometimes he still got out of breath and needed the walking cane.
The doctors said it would take a long time to make it back to himself, if indeed he ever would. Niro was determined to make it happen, which was why he currently hung from the bar drilled into the ceiling. Each lift made his chest muscles ache, and eventually he had to rest after a disappointing number of reps.
Niro still hung from the bar, willing the sting from his healed wounds to go away, when something hard and metallic prodded his lower back. Wearing only his sweatpants, the muzzle of the blaster bit coldly into his skin.
“Drop. Slowly.”
Niro didn’t bother to point out he could only fall at one speed; Cad Bane wasn’t one to give reasonable requests.
He let go of the bar and dropped the last few inches to the floor, letting his bent knees absorb the shock. Niro kept his hands raised near his head, showing he wasn’t going to reach for a weapon. Not that he had one, which would have been obvious from his half-dressed state.
Maybe he should have kept something on him, considering he knew this day was coming. His old friend had a habit of sinking his teeth in and refusing to let go.
“Colby,” said Niro evenly, and the pistol jabbed harder into his back. “Something I can do for you?”
“Coulda died, fer starters. Turn around.”
Niro did so, slowly, and met the crimson eyes that had followed him through so many of his bacta-induced dreams. Though he still had the hat (not Lazlo’s hat, no, this one was slightly different), his outfit had been altered. He wore a vest, a duster that reached the floor, and the most obvious difference, a black body glove and oxygen tubes leading to his cheek slits.
He gave Bane an obvious once-over, and his frown tightened to show he wasn’t impressed with the new gear.
“Guess you should have made sure I was dead.”
Lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth, and Bane jabbed the pistol into his stomach. Niro winced a little, but otherwise didn’t move.
“Maybe I’m here to rectify that.”
Niro just met his heated gaze with a flat one. He was tired of being told to run and hide, and he refused to do so. Not from him.
Bane’s eyes flicked to the side, and then back to Niro, and he stepped back enough to flick his pistol at something behind him.
“Yer gunbelt by the door. Pick it up.”
Niro’s eyes narrowed. So, Bane wanted him dead, but he wouldn’t shoot him in the back or take him out with a sniper rifle through the window. Same way he had to kill the old marshal face-to-face. He had to do it the superior way. As if facing his opponent in a contest somehow made his victory more legitimate.
“No.”
Bane loosed a growl from his throat, but Niro didn’t budge.
“Let’s not pretend I stand a chance against you in a shootout.”
Bane strode forward and shoved the muzzle against his stomach again. If he lived through this, he’d have several bruises across his abdomen.
“Ye drew and shot first.”
“And?”
“Ye cheated me!”
“Because I didn’t die?”
“’Cuz ye missed!”
Niro tightened his jaw, the first curls of anger licking up his stomach.
“Maybe I’m just a bad shot.”
“The fuck you are. Ye shot Grutty outta his sniper perch, so don’t tell me I was a hard target.”
Niro leaned in, his own eyes narrowed, and he was surprised when Bane didn’t retreat, their faces only inches away.
“It must chafe, never knowing for sure if you actually outgunned the old marshal. Did you beat the man who killed Lazlo? Or did you win because his attention slipped when I called out to you.”
Bane’s fangs bared behind spread lips, but Niro didn’t stop, his own teeth showing.
“No more duels, Colby. If you’re going to kill me, be a man about it.”
One second, the pistol was against his stomach, and the next it was replaced by a fist, hard and brutal, and right on top of his blaster scar.
Niro would have doubled over, but Bane’s fingers were around his throat, shoving him backward. He hit the wall and the low cabinet, his back aching as it dug into the ledge of the wood. Worse was the pain across his scars, they ached deep in the muscle and made it hard to draw breath.
Not that the hand around his neck helped with that, though Bane didn’t squeeze enough to stop the flow of air. His grip was tight enough to show that he could.
“Why. Why’d ye miss.”
Bane hissed the last word in Niro’s face, and if he was any closer they would be hitting snouts.
“You really have to ask me that?”
Bane’s eyes narrowed dangerously, his growl something a feral street dog might make.
“We ain’t been kids in a long time. If this is some sentimental shit—”
“It’s not.” Niro’s lips twitched into an empty smile. “Or if it is, it certainly wasn’t enough to stop you.”
Bane’s glare was hard and unamused. It really bothered him, Niro realized. Bane might want to kill him, but his hatred was outstripped by his need to rationalize what had happened. Like so many other things, he wouldn’t let this go.
“You really want to know?”
Bane said nothing, but his hand firm on Niro’s throat was answer enough.
“I didn’t want to shoot you in front of Isaac.”
“’Cuz he’s mine.”
Niro’s breath stopped, and he was sure his heart stopped, too. Bane finally looked on the right foot again, his smirk mean and sharp.
“Yeah, I figured it out. You all but told me yerself.” Bane took advantage of Niro’s off-balance and tried to push him further off his guard. “Where’s the li’l rugrat, anyway? Think I’ll say hello while I’m here.”
A deep, guttural noise ripped out of Niro’s chest, but Bane met the noise with a pleased narrowing of his eyes.
“Well, look who decided to grow some claws.”
“Don’t. He has nothing to do with this—”
“He’s got everything to do with it.”
Bane’s teeth were again on display, but it was the look in his eyes that drew all of Niro’s attention. A lifetime ago, when Colby was the only name he’d known, he’d worn his heart on his sleeve, sensitive to the injustices of the world. When Niro scraped his knees or banged his elbows, it was Colby who was there to bandage his wounds. But when they first found each other, when they didn’t know how to keep warm under the cardboard boxes or dig for food in the trash, it had been Colby who struggled to hide his tears.
The stark reality of their poverty forced them both to grow hard skin over the weak spots, but Niro still remembered. When you starved with someone, saw the fear in their eyes as you hid from bad men with wandering hands, you never forgot what it was like to see them wounded.
He might have a different name now, but there was more of Colby’s pain on his face than Niro ever thought he would see again.
“Arin wanted to tell you,” Niro said, his voice soft. Apologetic. “She never got the chance.”
“Funny thing ‘bout prisons. They still let ye get comm visits.”
Bane’s voice was flat, hollow, and that was somehow worse than the anger.
“She was worried how you would take it,” Niro tried to explain, but Bane’s lips curled.
“So, she kept it from me. Was she ever gonna come clean? Or was the plan to carry on and play house, steal my family from me and pretend it’s yours.”
Niro’s throat ached, from Bane’s fingers and from his words. There had been a time when Niro was his family, when the only family they had was each other. Did he blatantly choose not to remember, or did he just not care?
“It was her choice,” Niro finally said, “and I stood by it.”
“Ain’t you a loyal husband.” Bane’s voice dropped, his face drawing close again. “How’s that loyalty treatin’ ye now. Doesn’t feel so nice when it goes only one way, does it?”
Niro said nothing, but he couldn’t stop his own expression from falling. His feelings toward Arin, feelings he suspected weren’t returned in the same way, used to gnaw at him. He never blamed Arin for her choices—or resented them if it was clear she made them with someone else in mind, but sometimes… it stung. They both had loved a difficult man, and it seemed that fact wouldn’t let either of them rest.
“Arin always was a survivor,” Bane finally said, and his words were no longer snarled and hostile. He sounded like Niro remembered him, as if they were still best friends, confidants. Brothers. “She shacked up with ye for love, or lust, or stability, or stayin’ outta prison. Don’t matter. She’s dead. Ye owe her nothin’.”
“I didn’t do it for her.”
Bane’s face twisted, as if he couldn’t stand to hear the words Niro was saying, as if they caused him physical pain. But Niro pushed on, needing Bane to hear him, really hear him.
“I wasn’t going to let Isaac grow up without parents. I wasn’t going to let him grow up like us.”
“He’s not yer kid.”
“No.” Niro met Bane’s gaze, unyielding. “He’s your son, but I’m his father.”
Bane bared his teeth, a snarl rattling in his chest, and Niro thought, this is it. Those teeth will descend on him, and there won’t be enough of him left to save. Maybe Bane will rip out his throat and bleed him out. Or maybe he would just devour him. It had been centuries since a documented case of Duros cannibalism, but considering how they survived as children, Niro wouldn’t be surprised if this was their fated end.
And then Bane’s mouth smashed against his, rough and wild, much like the man himself. Those teeth he thought might be his end could still prove to be so as they caught Niro’s bottom lip, drawing blood.
Niro froze, unable to reconcile the violence he’d expected with the hungry demand of Bane’s mouth. And then something snapped into place, all of Niro’s anger and regret and sorrow, forged into something long forgotten but present since the first day Colby entered his life.
And it was as if the universe made sense again. As if this was where they were meant to arrive, not on opposites sides of a fight that only one of them would walk away from.
It had always been Colby and Niro against the world. That was how it was supposed to be.
Niro’s hands twisted in the duster, and he didn’t know which way he would shove Bane until their bodies collided, and he forgot all about the pain from those two points in his torso. Bane’s hands were as merciful as his lips, which was to say, not at all. The pads of his fingers scraped along his back until they fell to Niro’s hips and yanked down his sweatpants.
Colby had been slightly taller than Niro, and they’d both been too skinny, but now Niro far outweighed Bane in terms of bulk. But Niro might as well have weighed nothing as Bane pulled him away from the cabinet and shoved him flat to the wall.
Bane’s fingers prodded at his sheath opening, impatient and not gentle with the sensitive flesh, and that didn’t seem to matter one damn bit as Niro’s cock sprang from its internal sheath. Bane growled in satisfaction, either from Niro’s fast response or the cock he now squeezed in his hand.
The visual contrast between Niro’s jade skin wrapped in cerulean blue fingers sent a throbbing jolt through his cock, and he tugged at Bane’s belt, bracing for a rejection. But Bane said nothing; he simply watched him with narrow eyes, the brightest crimson Niro had ever seen.
Giving his own satisfied growl, Niro pulled the belt out of its loops and notches, then unzipped Bane’s trousers and pulled open the flaps. All it took was a single stroke of his fingers and Bane’s cock squeezed out, slicked up and eager for Niro’s grasping hand.
He’d be fooling himself if he never thought about what Colby looked like, though it had mostly been boyish fantasies, briefly renewed when he saw his best friend again in front of the old candy shop. Niro remembered the sting of seeing the woman with him, knowing it was too late. As if he’d had a shot to begin with.
Turned out, maybe he should have tried harder. If he hadn’t pushed Colby away by flashing his shiny new deputy badge, if he hadn’t let him fester over Lazlo’s death, if he’d just told Colby how much he missed him, maybe…
And then Niro wasn’t thinking much of anything at all as Bane took both of their cocks and squeezed them together, stroking them both with the long expanse of his fingers. Bane’s cock was longer, but Niro’s made up for it in girth, and the way Bane looked at him, possessive and certain, made Niro’s head spin. If he wasn’t still trying to catch his breath, trying to hold on under the storm that was Cad Bane, Niro would have taken the lean Duros, held him against the nearest surface, and buried himself as deep as he could go. Make Bane really feel it, and maybe make him finally understand what he meant to him.
But Bane was hungry teeth and demanding lips, and all thought left Niro’s head when Bane found his neck. He nipped and sucked and kissed, and Niro’s cock throbbed with shocking need. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d jerked off, long before he was shot, and it was as if his body was making up for the lack of attention.
“I—” Niro choked, holding on to that coat even as he thrust into Bane’s hand, precum spurting out of the tip, making the glide both messy and easier. “Colby, I—”
Whatever Niro was going to say was lost; a set of sharp teeth punctured the flesh between his neck and shoulder, and he cried out, his cock pulsing as he spilled over the both of them.
Bane snarled and released him from the bite, and with surprising strength, hauled Niro up on to the waist-high cabinet. Bane yanked off the sweatpants completely, shoved his hips between Niro’s spread legs, and pushed past the tight ring of muscle and buried the head of his cock inside.
The stretch was like a punch to the gut, and the pain had a horrendous twist of pleasure to it, enough that Niro’s cock twitched again, leaking more cum over Bane’s hand. But most of his focus was where their bodies joined, and though Bane was only a couple of inches deep, he still shuddered when Bane spilled inside him.
Then he shuddered again as he felt the rough edge around Bane’s cock just below the head. If Bane had pushed in any farther, he would have been trapped, latching onto Niro’s soft flesh.
Niro couldn’t even begin to process that; he’d never latched anyone, not even Arin, and he wouldn’t have thought Bane the type.
Bane, who had been entirely nonverbal since the first consuming kiss, ignored Niro’s shocked stare as he licked the bleeding wound on his shoulder, his hands bracketing Niro’s hips. He didn’t need to say it as he leaned against Niro’s chest, his own rising and falling in exertion, but he growled the pronouncement anyway.
“Yer mine.”
Bane laid his hand over the scarred flesh, two circular burns that Niro would carry with him the rest of his life. As if he needed another reminder of the man who had permanently marked him, both inside and out. At least Niro wasn’t the only one who could see it now.
“Always was,” Niro said, and then smiled a little at the unimpressed stare given back at him. And then he winced as Bane pulled out, the feel of cum dripping out of him something entirely new. Not bad, though, not even a little.
Bane zipped his trousers and buckled his belt, but Niro didn’t do more than put his feet back on the ground, leaning against the cabinet for support until his legs started to work properly.
“So,” Niro said, because one of them needed to talk first, “you plan on sticking around for a while?”
Bane had the gall to roll his eyes, but the faint smirk on his mouth was kind of… well, not kind of, it was attractive. Damn him.
“Might be. Depends if the local marshal plans to run me outta town.”
“Not up to me, unfortunately. I’m not wearing the badge at the moment.”
Bane took a very long, obvious glance up and down Niro’s naked body, and said, “I can see that.”
Niro wasn’t one to shy away from much, but if he’d been a warm blood, he would have blushed from head to toe. Instead, he gave Bane a look and slipped his sweatpants back on. He could take a shower later, and he wasn’t going to have this conversation in the nude.
“I’m serious. The council’s on high alert since… you got out of prison, and it would be best if you lay low.”
“And not cause any trouble, right?”
“For you, that’s probably too much to ask.”
Bane tilted his head and spoke, “Was a time that was true for both of us.”
As if Niro could forget. No one schemed as well as the two of them, once they were old enough to get really good at it, enough so that there were hungry days more than there were starving ones.
Bane approached him, and Niro’s drifting thoughts snapped to attention. He ignored the urge to curl inward, to shy away, an innate Duros response to facing a dangerous opponent. But Bane simply watched him, his gaze trailing down his chest until they fixed on the twin scars.
“Do they hurt?”
“Sometimes. Not as much as they used to.”
Bane pressed his lips together, and Niro thought he would leave it at that. But then he reached out and carefully, lightly, stroked his fingers down the scars. A gentle caress. An apology.
The touch sent a shiver up his spine and need down into his bones. It took years of discipline and self-control not to melt into that touch, to demand it go lower to where it was truly needed.
Niro wanted to speak but hesitated.
“What.”
Of course he would notice; Colby could always read Niro when he was trying to hide something, just as well as Niro could tell when Colby needed to say something without actually saying it. Like an apology conveyed in a touch.
“This will be the last time I see you, won’t it?”
Bane’s hand retreated and he gave Niro a narrow look, but it wasn’t suspicious, it was searching.
“That depends on you.”
“Me?”
Bane nodded to him, or that’s what he thought, until his gaze dropped to something on his shoulder. Niro followed and saw the bite mark, dripping green blood down his chest.
“You claimed me?”
The mixture of shock and disbelief was met with a smile that spread Bane’s mouth in a closed smirk. The expression disarmed Niro more thoroughly than a stun blast, and all he could do was stare as Bane walked to the front door of the apartment. He dipped the brim of his hat between his fingers.
“If ye don’t want the scar, can always use bacta. That’ll give me my answer fer next time.”
Next time?
“Say hi to our kid for me, will ya?”
Our kid?!
Niro sputtered, but Bane just sent him a wink and walked out the door.
“Wait!”
But Bane was gone before Niro could warn him about the police droid. He ran, expecting to hear blaster shots and maybe a body hitting the ground. Instead, he opened the door and found the police droid standing in the hallway, perfectly at ease.
Niro caught a door sliding shut down the hall, the one that led to the maintenance stairs. And then he spotted the restraining bolt on the police droid, and it was no mystery who had attached it. He pried off the bolt with a few stray sparks, and the droid turned to him.
“Marshal, you are injured.”
Niro sighed. That damn bite mark.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll have to report this—”
“Do not report it. That’s an order.”
“Yes, Marshal.”
Niro shut the door and leaned his back against it. What the hell had he just done, and what had he gotten himself in to.
He went to the refresher to wash the wound, but when he opened the medpac, he hesitated. And then he pulled out a regular bandage, leaving the bacta patch in its packaging.
Niro had never received a claiming bite before, nor had Arin asked him for one, and he hadn’t offered. She hadn’t received one from Bane, either.
He didn’t know what the feeling was as it rose in its chest. A strange mixture of warmth, want, possessiveness, and yearning. It was new, and it was much preferable to the dull ache that had occupied his chest since Bane had first arrived from Torano.
This time when Isaac got home from school, Niro greeted him with a smile that didn’t feel forced or halved. He’d showered and fully dressed so there was no hint of the bite, but Isaac still sensed something different about him.
“Are you all right, Papa?”
Niro got on one knee and hugged him, not even wincing when the arms around his neck pressed against the bite. The bite that had been left by Isaac’s other father.
“I’m fine, son. Just fine. Everything is going to be okay.”
And for the first time in a long time, Niro believed it.