i don’t know that i can do this.
bruce’s hair, sweaty and dark, forms a barrier between them. a defense. colby’s fingers twitch against the grip she still has on the now abandoned cloth. the urge to reach out and remove the obstacle bruce has created is strong. but she resists. she doesn’t want him to feel like a cornered animal. caged. she settles on words instead.Â
“that’s okay,” she finds herself saying. her eyes follow the up and down of his chest as he breathes. shaky. “that’s okay if you don’t know if you can do this, bruce. sometimes i don’t know if i can either.” it’s a quiet confession. she doesn’t get to put him in a vulnerable spot without opening herself up in return. “but i’m learning. in the beginning, that night on the rooftop, you tried to tell me a similar thing, didn’t you? you knew i was more than anger, and i didn’t want to hear it. i didn’t want to believe you. so i lashed out.” she knows now, months and months later, just how right he had been. “i’m tired, bruce, of being so fucking furious at the world all the god damn time. i want more. i want you.”Â
this confession, louder, dislodges something from her chest. her words wobble. her grip on the cloth tightens. rivulets of water leak from it and roll down her fingers. her wrist.Â
“so it’s okay to not know. but we can want, can’t we?” she swallows something down. maybe its tears. maybe its bile.Â
“my life is going to be dangerous with or without you, bruce. gotham made me just like it made you. i can’t escape that. i’m not running. but i’ll stay right here and fight like hell with you.”
Naturally, he expects disappointment to follow. Walls exist between Bruce and the outside world, outside entanglements. The years have been spent carefully avoiding them, but Colby has become a blind spot, someone that leaves him feeling defenseless as she encroaches further into his life.Â
As his head bows and he tries to retreat, he braces for upset, for the waves of her emotions to crash and erode at his resolve. He expected levied anger, defensiveness, maybe even venom. However, quiet understanding is extended from the other side. He blinks a couple times as he processes this, and his head soon raises to look Colby in the eye again, watching her own wavering struggle with vulnerability.Â
I want more. I want you.Â
It’s a declaration so plain that he can’t subvert it, talk himself out of feelings and situations that are clearly there. Dark brows fretfully knit together over stormy looking eyes. They haven’t lost their glass-like sheen, and his lips press into a thin line as he debates on what to say. The tightness in his chest hasn’t eased, so he forgoes words.
There’s a screech of metal as the stool beneath him is shoved back a few inches as he gets abruptly to his feet. It soon tips, hitting the concrete floor with a hard bang. But he doesn’t pay it any attention.Â
Arms wind around Colby, pulling her into his chest in an embrace, in a rare first move. A hand moves to the back of her head, cradling it as he holds her. A breath hitches in his chest uneasily, and he lets it go on a slow exhale. “I want you, too,” he whispers, fearful to say it any louder.Â