the way selina swoons and coos is like some dizzy fool she’d never agree to the kind of girl she’d beat a man to death for in an alleyway
the kind of girl that’s still simmering just underneath her skin, sizzling all the time. she’s constantly immolating and no the fuck one can see it. she’s been melting for years and she’s unsure how no one’s aware. maybe it’s because she doesn’t talk to anyone for more minutes than she needs to get what she needs or wants out of them.
maybe it’s because holly is the only person she’s alive for, somehow. bruce could deal without her– she’s a variable in his life he can barely analyze. she doesn’t fit, just like how this persona feels when she puts it on. it has no creases– no gaps, but the mask on her face– kitty-cat as it is– to show for any sort of deception. her lips are so red and her smile agonizes her. it’s throbbing. her teeth hurt. she just hates this, the over-exaggerated little touches of quiet glee enough to paint her as the kind of beautiful brunette too similar to so many others. forgettably memorable.
she hates falsified fawning, and she hates more that it’s without flaw. it feels filthy in a completely different way than selina often has to shake off. it feels like wearing a mask that she was given as more a curse than any sort of beaming gift. her teeth itch. but the word motorcycle sparks to life her brown eyes so vibrant they’re a flicker of flint stricken into the dark.
she can’t help the reaction to the word motorcycle, and somehow it’s clear in the soft quiet of the words she’s surprisingly not intimating anything. between the oddities of those profanities is the real selina, and for a moment it peeks through lacy black enough to give way to the cat’s soul. it’s chipped away at, and suitably inappropriate, but it’s the human remains of a soul.
she moves on autopilot. the moment of weird transparency dissipates to a facade again. she slips back beneath the waters and drowns herself, emerges again with that famous vivacity. she knows kate sees it, and she hopes she won’t really know. her eyes greedily travel down the sleek line and her gorgeous lips dip into a heart-touched pout. one who knows her can see she’s thinking about auto theft, but fuck you, she just loves taking rich people’s shit and then stripping it for parts to fence jokingly easily.
gotta love that corruption.
her desire to wander flares up, but her body remembers to stick close to kate, it recalls in her atoms that she needs safety because right now she feels so exposed. she feels like there are fucking laser sights all trained on her face. she’s doing an incredible job of pretending not to feel the prickles of every tiny hair. that old cigarette burn on the back of her neck throbs, hidden away, but so visible to her every nerve. she doesn’t have to see it to feel it, and then to feel the bottomless discomfort that it’s just there.
“ take me somewhere fun, baby. “
her voice raises a couple charmingly high octaves to put it on really. she’s absolutely unbreakable.
“ even if it is in a car. “
she leaves out instead of a bike. anyone who knows the cat knows that she loves would die for fucking adores motorcycles. and that’s too much knowledge to attach her voice to, even if it is in such a limited environment. one the both of them can get out of. one with an escape hatch. she doesn’t even emphasize car, but she trusts kate’s intellect to be able to just read between the lines. if she doesn’t, she’ll figure it out when her motorcycle disappears.
kate makes nice, playing at the socialite playboy-playwoman-plaything for the media in such a sleight-of-hand portrait that the media will never look at the thing that’s dangling right in front of them: jacob kane’s erstwhile soldier of a daughter scarcely seen outside the cover of a night club is a vigilante. she moves through the crowd with a studied swagger that’s cocky in the hike of her chin, in the weave of her shoulders, in the way that she moves between people as though it’s HER name & not her stepmother’s on the door. she moves in such a way that no one would ever anticipate how uncomfortable it is not to settle her stance into at ease or at attention. she studies every situation for its tactical advantage.
so, because she is trained to hone in on the little things ( & because she’s had selina in her arms, underneath her, touched the edges of something fragile & feral that doesn’t want to be touched ), she captures that hush that breathes out excitement. it draws up the edge of her mouth like a needle through a thread, plucking it up in a pleased quirk that matches the mark of her eyebrow behind the curtain of her bangs.
“ ----- only if you ask nicely. ” a wink that should really only ever be for the cameras that swarm the edges of this particular kane party swimming with sharks feathers out the corner of her eye anyway.
there’s enough there suddenly that it piques her curiosity & her interest. she wants to dip deeper beneath the surface, to prod at this exposed bit of information along with the rationale for their sudden exit from the gala but holds back like a bated breath.
she’s got the cat on her arm for now, let the fickle thing come up close enough to ask for attention & she isn’t about to let her go. they’re out on the front porch in the early summer air that’s warm enough to coax while still bitter enough to brush goose flesh up her bare arms when the breeze suits its own spontaneity.
“ & if you tell me when we’re out of here what the hell has you so freaked out, ” a young man outfitted in a standard-issued neon vest over his suit & tie comes rushing up, flustering to peel the door open for the pair of them. kate holds out her hand so that it balances the underside selina’s elbow to usher her into the vehicle & away from the raucous cacophony of laughter, golf talk, & clinking glasses. “ maybe we’ll have fun in the car. ” that spears a grin that can only be described as rakish & raking up toward her cheek while she fishes a handful of bills free to tip the valet.