cw: 18+, smut-lite, reference to past suicide attempt but nothing detailed!
words: 13.7k
a/n: this chapter is SOOOO exciting to share, i'm over the mooon that it's here now. oh my goddd!! there's lotsss more but i'll let you get to it <3
Unable to break through the crowd for a parting hug and not lose your boyfriend, you sent a goodbye text to Rai. You barely focused on the screen as your body relaxed, soothed just by Bruce’s presence in the room.
When your skin met his, you relaxed into his touch and tucked into his shoulder. Warm and familiar, it spurred a new level of excitement to be heading back to Wayne Tower together—in the full sense of the word.
Bruce led the way to his car without a peep, focusing the entirety of his energy on getting you to the passenger safely. As you buckled you dodged blaring camera flashes and angled your face down so they couldn't catch your conversation. “Why didn't you stick around to talk to March?”
“Too many eyes,” he replied, not bothering to shift himself from the paparazzi. Staring a bit too long at his lips, you had to look away before your mind went blank.
“Ah, your 'not endorsing' thing.” You flopped back into the leather seat. “Might have to talk to you about that after tonight.”
The main road glittered with fresh rain and the bustle looked as it always had. You complimented March as you settled into the post-meeting routine—told Bruce how good the candidate was, how much people liked him.
“Big turnout.”
His voice was quiet, expression flat; his knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel in a way that was worried, antsy, anxious. You went toward it.
“How'd your meeting with Crane go?”
“Fine.”
Fine wasn't all that comforting; Bruce was shaken about the paparazzi, surely, but he didn't seem in the mood for reassurance. He looked resolute in his distraught.
You put your hand on his thigh and he clenched the wheel. “Are you good?”
He drew a deep, slow breath and nodded. It wasn't convincing. To get you both out of your heads, you turned attention toward the night’s plans.
“I have a few movies picked out this time, which feels like a miracle.” You went to your notes app to find the list, beginning to pepper off names until he gently interrupted.
“Sorry, but,” his hand strangled the wheel again. “I don't think I can do our date tonight.”
“Why not?” You cocked your head at him, intrigued. Was it the paps? Had the meeting not gone well?
“Just work stuff.”
His voice was tempered, quiet; you rested your hands in your lap as you talked yourself down.
It has nothing to do with his mental health, it has nothing to do with us. It's just Batman shit.
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Maybe.”
Wayne Tower was in view before you knew it.
While you were extremely aware of his shift in mood and what that might mean, you didn't allow yourself to spiral. You waited until his car pulled into the garage and you were both in the elevator—which you made sure had no cameras—to ask about it. After denying issues with his medication, side effects, or if he needed to talk, the elevator stopped at his floor.
“I'm alright for now.”
“For now?” you pressed, nudging closer to him and wrapping your arm into his elbow. He nodded, and it was just convincing enough when paired with his response.
“Being away made things pile up.”
It made sense; “It's not like you're Batman or anything.”
Bruce laughed under his breath but you weren't sold.
As you walked into the foyer, your gaze landed on the pops of color on each table. Florals in various shades of white, pink and red brought a stunning burst of liveliness to the place. You ducked into the kitchen to find a purple and pink bouquet on the table and red roses by the sink.
You leaned on the entryway wood and stared at him. “Is there a bouquet in every room?”
A whisper of a grin wore his lips. “Mhm.”
“This is gorgeous, oh my god.”
You'd only gone up a few stairs before he called after you.
“I have to go work.”
Pouting for good measure, you spun and gestured for him to come up. “You sure you can't give me a tour?”
His shoulders hunched and he put his hand in his pockets, but he obliged. The wool of his overcoat flowed behind him just enough to hit your ankles when you stepped a stair too close.
He gestured toward his room which he introduced as ‘the bedroom’, sweetly reminding that you weren't tethered to it and could inhabit any room you liked.
“Bruce,” you cozied up, wrapping your arms around his waist. “You're not pressuring me to room with you. I can't wait.”
When you stepped into the bedroom and gushed over the decor he added for you, he stayed in the hall. Continuing the tour, you passed the room you used to use where most of your stuff resided, and he said so low you almost couldn't make it out: “You can put your stuff in the other room if you'd like.”
The theater room was the star of the show; once barren, it was cozy and lush, with plush blankets, throw pillows, and vibrant snacks illuminated by backlit LEDs.
“You put all this together?”
“I did.”
His voice weakened with each passing word. Your excitement hushed. “Baby,”
His jaw flexed. “I've really got to work.”
You stepped into the hallway. “Are you upset about missing the date?”
He stared at you with such a despondent look you were frozen. After an undetermined length of time—god, it all disappeared with him—he agreed. “Yeah.”
Though everything in you wanted to pry, you’d kept him away from his duties longer than ever. If it was urgent, it was urgent; this was the life you’d signed up for. “Okay. I’ll break in the TV for us.”
You slugged him in the arm, hoping to get a little rise out of him. When he didn’t bite, you launched into a hug that was carefully reciprocated, his arms slowly and lightly wrapping around you in full.
“Go for it.” His voice was soft by your ear and your heart fluttered. You squeezed him tighter. “Have fun.”
“I will,” you assured, brushing some lint off his shoulder. You nuzzled his chin. “Don't work too late.”
His grin pulled wider as he took you in. Drinking up his admiration, you followed how his eyes roamed all parts of your face like he’d been in a desert for years. That tenderness had been sorely missed, even after just one night.
“Got to go. I’ll let you know when I’m finished.”
“Well, if you’ve got to…”
He gave you one last squeeze and headed for the basement. The decor snagged your attention again and you lost yourself briefly in repose. Colors coordinating, everything so practical and immersive, down to the snacks. It was as if he’d gone to a movie theater yesterday.
Realizing you forgot to say it, you jogged out to the railing and shouted, “Love you!” but he was already gone.
Jogging down to your old room, you went through the piles of neatly folded clothes atop the dresser. Alfred, kind and compassionate as he was, had left all of your intimates untouched. It didn’t take long to take some outfits down to Bruce’s room, despite the burn in your thighs from your feet slamming down marble steps.
A final pile plunked on the edge of Bruce’s bed made a paper in the bed’s center flutter in the whoosh of air. You picked it up, sitting on the edge of his mattress to read.
Hi, love. If I haven’t already told you, the dresser is yours and half of the closet. Feel free to reorganize things to your liking; I want you to feel comfortable. I bought a candle that reminds me of the field near your house. Hopefully it inspires a bit of home. I love you. - Bruce
You tucked the letter in your—your?!—bedside table and uncapped the candle on your side. Your heart threatened to expand past your ribcage when you smelled its woody, ambery pine. It was probably good he wasn’t here tonight; otherwise you wouldn’t get any shuteye. Not when he was this sweet, this perfect, when the excitement percolated that this was where you lived now.
And so it was for the next hour. Hanging up and folding clothes, tucking them into drawers, grabbing toiletries and infiltrating his bathroom. He used a cheap brand of shaving cream and very harsh body wash, but you thought that might've had a purpose. Difficult to imagine a frilly soap removing the dirt and grime off a vigilante.
A rush of endorphins hit your system when you caught a whiff of it; despite how it would likely destroy your skin barrier with its three-in-one formula, you turned on the water and hopped in. The room felt more like a luxury sauna than a typical bathroom, with a water pressure that rivaled anywhere in the world, not just Gotham. Through the fogged glass exposed a claw tub tucked into the corner, something you’d overlooked for the shiny sink and gleaming mirror. This bathroom was practically the size of your old studio.
Bergamot and a scent you could only describe as ‘musky fresh’ raged sulfates across your skin. You stayed in there so long that you worried your entire body might prune. Hunting for towels was an entire ordeal until you lifted the lid of a weird trash can and pulled out a freshly warmed one. Fuck, he was rich.
And when you wrapped it around you and it felt like a horde of rabbits, when you applied your drugstore skincare in a gargantuan, pristine mirror over a gorgeous sink and immaculate countertop, felt the cool marble beneath your—
In the mirror you noted a light switch on the back wall that said ‘heating’. Within seconds of flicking it ON, the ground warmed.
He was fucking filthy rich.
Something hard jammed into your shoulder when you plopped into his bed to rest. In the center of the mattress, likely beneath the card and so dark you couldn’t see it against his sheets sat a debit card with instructions sticky-noted on the back.
Address shipping to ‘Pennyworth’.
Bruce’s signature on the stripe was beautiful. You traced your fingers over it and the embossed metal lettering. Envisioned him laying beside you, hands intertwined, staring at the ceiling as you planned the next few months of your lives.
After a minute, however, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the fairytale of having an unlimited debit card.
Target, Nordstrom. Then West Elm, just because you could. Housewares, clothes, birthday gifts. By the time you realized the damage, you must’ve clicked ADD TO CART a hundred times, inputting Pennyworth a dozen.
To break the loop, you moseyed down to the kitchen to get a bite. The cupboards were nearly overflowing, the fridge and freezer perfectly stashed with multiples of your favorite foods. By a quick look as you gathered an orange and some Phish Food, he’d bought every single thing you’d ever said you liked, as well as replicated the cupboard at your house. If he were anyone else, his elephantine memory might unnerve you.
Tucked into the counter flush to the fridge was a new bottle of wine, an exact match of the one he’d said he owed you for back at your apartment. Did anything slip past him?
You got comfortable in the theater room. Bruce had already hooked his card up to every on-demand video service, so you switched on a movie that had just left theaters and dug into your pint like it’d run away. It wasn’t as lonely as you thought it would be up here, but still—at various points throughout the film, you tussled with whether to text Bruce.
Would it interrupt his focus? Would it take away time from people who needed him right then?
You turned your phone on silent, resolved not to disturb him. You could handle these nights alone, even enjoy them. Come breakfast you could talk about the spoils of the evening.
One damn thing was for sure: you weren't cracking the first night.
The dregs of the pint were smeared and half-dried up your forearm when you woke up. Thankful it hadn't poured on the couch, you rushed to the bathroom to clean up and basked in the subtle aroma of his hand soap. Using his things made you feel closer to him.
His bed looked inviting and the exhaustion from the nap still lingered; without Bruce as reason to push through your fatigue, you fell into his bed. A rush of his scent wrapped you as you snuggled under the covers. You checked your phone for the time and got drawn into Scypher.
Despite being private, your notifications were blown up. People tagged you in various thinkpieces that were a level of viral that made your head spin. Two conversations appeared prominent: one about you and Bruce’s autograph stint, the other of you and him at the bar. The latter drew you like a moth to flame.
Surprising given the lack of full light at the dive and the social's compression, the video was in stunning quality. Whoever recorded left whispered commentary throughout. “They've been like this all night” “It's literally him, I don't know if you can see” “Why would he be here? I'm literally in shock” “He hasn't stopped holding her hand since I got here” and “I swear to god I'm not joking. I'm not hallucinating, right?”
You pulled the covers to your chin, the luxe fabric gliding on your skin like water, and pressed play.
They’d caught two minutes of dancing—at least that was the only part they posted. Watching him twirl you out and into his chest brought that weightless feeling right back. Crinkly eyes, chatting and laughing, he looked every bit as happy as you’d felt. You downloaded it as you made the mistake of perusing the comments.
I didn't buy them at first but this is legitimately the first time I've seen that man smile
It had more likes than you cared to think about.
Indulging your curiosity, you clicked on the top reply.
Isn't it well known by now that he's a junkie? He's high off his ass.
|
Idk man, he might just be having fun
Since you were private, you gave OP’s reply a like.
The rest weren’t too terrible, but enough to stick like chewed gum to an otherwise perfect night. All at once the memory blended out of secrecy, letting its bloody pulse until it threatened to become a concept.
You tore yourself off the posts after scrolling through hundreds of comments on various threads mocking you for giving out your autograph, asking if you came from money, speculating on the interview, if this was PR…
Clinging to the home page refresh like a life preserver. Thoughts swirling in his pitch-black bedroom of feeling like a specimen that just got poked, on the verge of making your page public and putting them on blast. They didn’t know him, they didn’t know you. Acting high and mighty, leeching off of other’s intimacy to feel anything in their own lives.
A mutual aid request popped up on your timeline. Someone you’d followed years back from a freshman year science course.
$1753 left for medical bills before TOMORROW. Please please repost, thank you so much!!! Anything helps!!
You gave it a like and hovered above the repost button on impulse, then paused.
Sent.
The algorithm must’ve processed that you clicked the link because five more popped up after it.
Seventy five bucks. Sent.
A hundred and one. Sent.
Four-hundred. Sent.
Two thousand one hundred fifty. Sent.
Forty-six. Sent.
Sending one made you desperate to send another. You clicked around GoFundMes until your eyes went bleary and your wrist ached, until you memorized the numbers on his debit, until your phone dimmed from low power and your head hit the pillow.
You spent breakfast alone.
Alfred juiced some fruit while you made pancakes, longing to do something with your empty hands. He talked politely about how you were settling in and if there was anything he could do to make the transition easier. It was considerate, enjoyable. He assured you that Bruce had come up an hour earlier to grab some food. It was meant to help but only made you miss him.
“Is this… normal?” You took the last sip of orange juice. “Him working into the next morning?”
The old man gave you a sympathetic grin. “Absolutely, Miss. Nothing to fret over. I suggest you find something to keep busy in the meantime.”
With that, he insisted on taking your plate and doing the dishes himself.
A self-guided tour of the place was imminent; there were floors you’d never even seen all the way at the top. You peeked into rooms that didn’t have locks; so far as the tower showed, the only locked one was his parent’s room. Everything looked the same to the first few levels. Gothic, a little dusty and dated. No Beast hiding in some upper floor dwelling, no dirty secrets.
Sleepy from the week’s happenings, you found a chaise on the uppermost floor nestled by a silver rimmed window. You skated down to the library and plucked out a novel to properly utilize the reading nook. It was difficult to find something fun in a sea of nonfiction, and more than a few of those informative titles drew your eye, but you needed to escape. Your head swam with numbers and debts that slowly disappeared under the glow of Gotham fog and pages of serif font.
When you tired of the current novel, you had a kitchen full of snacks and a room full of books to peruse. Tracing fingers along century-aged spines too stubborn for a duster. Inspected the intricate spirals carved into the wood. Crunched into an apple.
It was easy to fill your Sunday. The wood began to warm by late evening, your simple presence bringing some temperature to the tower, turning the air less stale. Dinner was alright; Alfred once again invited you not to worry, he’d brought a plate down to him before calling you, and to focus on making the place more your own. You translated what he meant: Get used to it, Bruce is like this.
Monday morning rolled around to another breakfast for two. A few of your packages had arrived seemingly with the morning paper, large boxes scattered around the foyer. While Alfred plated, you carried them up to Bruce’s room.
He held out a plate of eggs benedict; you only knew what it was when you asked. Just as you were about to sink into your chair he questioned, “Has Bruce spent any time with you since landing, Miss?”
You shook your head as you dug into his signature orange juice. Alfred set aside a third plate and walked a pair of keys to you. A minute later you were holding a large silver tray with two plates, steeling yourself to the raucous of the elevator. Your fingers tingled as the doors opened.
“Alfred, I'm busy. I already told you.”
He sounded exhausted. Had he slept?
You stepped into the basement and cleared your throat. Bruce startled and switched off his monitors before spinning around.
“What are you doing down here?”
“Bringing you breakfast, Mr. Nocturnal.” He met you halfway and took the tray off your hands. As much as you wanted to stare at him, touching him was more important; nestling into a side hug made your eyes fall, thoughts glossy. “Wanna eat together?”
You looked up at him with sparkly, bright eyes. Up close like this, his fatigue was a love letter—of service to Gotham, of loving his community. The bags under his eyes, the heaviness in his arm around yours, all for the city.
“Not today.”
Whatever he was looking into was consuming him. You traced his cheekbone with the tips of your fingers. “Not even ten minutes?”
He looked positively yearnful, if that was even an expression. Those blue eyes dark in the cave’s low lighting almost looked brown and stubble erupted over his jaw. In fact, he looked so worn that you shook your head and told him not to worry about it. You took your plate back and left his.
“Hey.” You rubbed his arm in an attempt to soothe and he bristled. “Don't worry about me. So long as we get our sunrise date tomorrow.”
It was half a tease, knowing that it could be pushed if this was emergent, but when he didn't smile at you, your heart clenched.
It could be anything. Something with his parents, with him. A tragedy in the city or one about to unfold. Worrying about you. Shoving down insistent questions was a fireball in the back of your throat but you wouldn’t be needy. He already felt guilty enough.
“It's fine if we can't do it, but can you just give me a heads up?”
His brows knit together and you rushed out an addendum to patch his wounds.
“Just because I’d rather not leave your bed so early if not.” Your laugh was stiff. “Don’t know how you ever leave it, it’s like a cloud.”
Maybe he eased, it was hard to tell.
“I can't do it.” he spoke without apology and the plate went heavy in your hand, its ceramic chilled. You must’ve not hid your disappointment well, because when you turned around he shot out an olive branch.
“I'm sorry for not warning you.”
You nodded without looking back; he didn’t need to witness it sink in that you might spend most of this relationship alone. “You're really busy.”
“Friday.” His voice echoed. Glancing over your shoulder showed he’d taken a step closer. “I have to figure this out by Friday. We can have dinner then.”
“Friday night we can have a date?”
He nodded, earnest as ever, and you couldn’t swallow it anymore.
“Can you at least tell me what it is?”
Had he even blinked once?
“It's better for this to be worked on alone. I need to focus.”
Naively, you’d thought this ache of inferiority would leave now that you were together. Past snarky comments at your suggestions while detectiving flooded in.
“Okay. Date night on Friday then. What time?”
His pause felt weighty. “Six.”
You nodded. “Perfect. I’ll uh, have stuff ready by then.”
“How are you feeling?”
His concern was music to your ears. What alarmed you was how fragile he looked at a short distance.
“I’m alright. How much sleep are you getting?” You stepped back into the basement and he shook his head. A lot of nonverbals this morning.
“Enough to keep working.” He stuttered after he paused. “Don't worry.”
“It doesn't look like you're getting any sleep. If this is about me saying you should do more for the city,”
“It’s not about that.” He bit his lower lip and fluttered his lashes. His voice went soft. “I know we planned fun things but this is crucial.” His eyes shimmered. “I have to figure it out. It could change everything.”
You felt tears press forward; your voice frayed under the weight of the world on his shoulders. “How am I not supposed to worry when you say things like that?”
He didn't have an answer. “It'll be more manageable if I'm left alone until Friday.”
“Okay.”
“If you need anything, ask Alfred. He'll be happy to help.”
The donating. “You have money set aside for philanthropy, right? Can I use that card you lent me for it?”
He nodded. You wished he’d use his words more, longing to hear his voice.
Overwhelmed, you brushed at your eyes with your free hand and pressed the UP button after sidling in. One foot in front of the other until you could slam down the food and nap this vertigo away.
The elevator doors began to shutter. He called out. “Thanks for the food.”
You stared at the floor of the elevator as it rose, wringing your hands together under the plate. You brushed shoulders with Alfred as you hurried to the counter to set down the plate, ate a few bites, then dug out plastic wrap to put it away. Ran up to his room. Threw yourself in bed and let the emotion crash you to sleep.
In a supposed effort to make you feel worse about yourself, you, of course, had only slept two hours until your body fitfully rose. Another shower you now justified because of ‘crusties’, another time smelling his body wash like your lover was lost at sea. And after, while it wasn’t your first choice for distraction, the ever-mounting threat of torrential loneliness pushed you to email Dr. Vry.
How did you professionally say: I am now dating my interview subject and he is very high profile. What does this mean for credibility and how much of a stain do you think I am on The Gazette’s good name?
Fingernails chipping against the smooth wooden desk while you waited, the chair inexplicably comfortable for its form factor, staring at the screen of your new laptop bought on impulse the night before. Every thought about money and privilege was shoved to the back of your skull as fast as it came.
Decluttering your inbox of job offers made you sicker—it seemed you’d been pidgeonholed into little more than a gossip writer, a seat warmer, a cool glass of champagne at handoff to make people feel special. You’d done it to your fucking self at the end of the day, it was why you were in this tower instead of rotting in a cold studio. In what world could you complain?
When she did get back to you four hundred email deletes later, Dr. Vry expressed it was up to you. It wasn’t required to remain employed, though she followed that up with ridiculous levels of gratitude for what you’d brought to the department. She signed it saying she understood if there were sunnier horizons on your path now.
Your stomach twisted. She hadn’t made this any clearer. All you knew was the longer you looked at that email, the more nauseous you felt. If you resigned, you had zero confidence that anyone would take you seriously on your own. An interview with March, sure, but what if that did nothing?
The Gazette had rigor, reputation. If you went solo, you were certain the only open doors would come from the boyfriend, Mr. Wayne. At least if you stayed with an official publication, there’d be a name other than yours at the bottom.
You pulled up March's campaign website and found his email.
I am emailing about our interview discussion this past weekend. At this time, my employment is not finalized. It is my understanding that if I continue my employment with The Gazette, it does not meet your criteria for an interview.
However, I am curious if we could meet to discuss issues surrounding free press over an informal meeting—off the record. Please let me know a time and place to meet if you are interested.
Always available for the residents of Gotham. Does Willow off Fourth Ave. work tomorrow at three?
No sign-off, so casual it was refreshing. Maps revealed a nice café in midtown, and intrusive thoughts of scandals swirled. It was imperative to meet at a government space or speculation would run wild; you couldn’t risk his campaign getting negative press.
I am only able to discuss such matters on neutral ground. If a casual meeting space does not work for you, unfortunately I cannot meet your request. Feel free to reach out if you are able to accommodate.
Regretfully,
Lincoln March
Dammit.
Why wasn't City Hall neutral ground?
You took a lap around the tower to clear your mind. You didn't know the man well enough to make a call, didn't have any info to go off of outside of his campaigns, he wouldn't speak to you unless you were willing to cause a major upset with the public that would likely backfire on him in some capacity—probably you, too.
At some point in your pacing, after passing the twirling, abandoned library, after feeling the echo in every footstep, the tower inflated. How many times had you walked past this building during undergrad? How many passing thoughts occurred about how terrible it was for people to live like that?
Like this?
Mar wasn't responding and Rai was working. With three billion hours to kill before having dinner with Bruce and the thoughts closing in, you told Alfred you were going out. Despite your insistence on not troubling him, he ensured that you had a chauffeur and bodyguard now.
It was a relief to have someone with you in the department stores; sometimes when you switched aisles, you felt the cold metal of the gun against your temple again and moved closer to Alfred for a semblance of comfort.
The public was fairly decent to you. A few people had their phones out and suspiciously focused on your person as you moved but they were easy to tune out.
Miscellaneous hygiene items, clothes, entirely clearing out the menstrual product section, all the blankets. What else did shelters need? What else did they need help with?
Housing, you thought as you put some baby clothes and formula in the cart. They’re in a shelter because they need to be housed. Here I am putting clothes in the cart just for them to keep warm without a goddamn house.
It was logical that you couldn’t walk into shelters and place every person in an apartment—not yet anyway. Was there a better way to consolidate philanthropy money? A fund that could sustain itself, donations to a certain cause, a system you could develop for a hierarchy of who needed something first? How could you even decide that? Was that even ethical? Did someone who didn’t want kids or couldn’t have kids deserve housing after people with kids? But kids were helpless comparatively, at a critical stage of development, surely that would constitute—
“Miss? Should I gather a fresh cart?”
Absently, you nodded, and Alfred took off. You needed Bruce to bounce these thoughts off of. It was his money after all, even if he didn’t do shit to earn it.
You rubbed your temple, a headache coming on.
As you passed more people who definitely weren’t taking photos of you, that ‘scandal’ volume turned up. Would people think you had an ulterior motive? That you were trying to clean up the Wayne image? That you were trying to make a good name for yourself after ‘the scandal’? Would the shelter workers think that? Would people feel insulted taking donations from someone like you?
It made you fucking sick to think of your relationship as a TMZ headline. That you were giving any weight to those losers.
Alfred arrived with the second cart and you directed him toward the food aisles. You filled it with the good shit people would actually like, the expensive items you couldn’t have regularly afforded. Ice cream, cakes, fancy soups, all the things no one wanted to throw out.
Checking out was alright. Getting to the car was okay. Pulling up to the first shelter and doing a quick, rushed handoff felt… strange. You were shaking in the back of the car by the time you finished dropping off the third round of items, sweaty and tired from carrying all the boxes. Something nagged at you.
You cut the first day short and didn't end up shopping a second carful. Alfred made conversation on the route back about how he wished Bruce would be more proactive about using his money for public good, but he was grateful someone was stepping up.
“You’d have much more to work with if Bruce tended to finances,” Alfred shared as he pulled into the garage. You quickly googled his net worth and your mouth went dry. He confirmed it was accurate, then sighed.
Still a billionaire by a mile. Their concept of money was peculiar.
Walking to the elevator with Alfred dehazed the experience of the private garage. Immaculate metal siding, clean kempt concrete, bright even lighting. Before, all you’d noticed was Bruce.
Was he really that encompassing from the beginning?
The tower was gigantic. The elevator ride smooth and efficient, spacious. The foyer dated and gothic but nonetheless grand.
It took twenty-one strides to walk from the entrance to the first stairstep. That was the length of your entire house. You looked to the right where he’d been bleeding back in Spring; if something happened to you, Bruce would make sure you got the best doctors on the planet.
Deep breaths as you reached the top of the stairs—clean air. No musty scent from molded floorboards and walls. Secured windows without drafts.
If you wanted, you could never leave this tower again. Get every new movie delivered to you in advance. Freshly prepared meals from a professional chef. All your affairs put in order, clothes washed and pressed, messes cleaned; you’d never have to lift a finger.
The safety it provided was so wonderful as to have an edge, a bite, a cut. It wasn’t fair to hoard all the dense soil, to bloom in an otherwise untended garden. A bumble bee didn’t stay in its nest.
So you’d sleep past sunrise, your alarm went off later the next morning. Tuesday’s breakfast left a pang in your stomach as Bruce continued to sequester himself in the cave. You struggled not to show frustration when the paparazzi followed your car, pressed cameras around you while shopping. Smile. Wave. Eventually you just ignored them.
Who you couldn’t ignore were the public; a few people wandered up to you in various stores to take photos and ask about Bruce. How is he doing? was their question, usually including some version of What’s it like to date him? By the seventh person you rehearsed a standard answer: He’s great, it’s great. And we’re doing very well, thank you for asking.
Getting out of the big box stores brought one relief and another wound. Every time you did a donation handoff it felt like striking someone across the face. The imbalance was so great that it felt pitiful; you knew all the blankets and cakes in the world couldn’t make up for the penthouse you drove back to. Until your arms ached and your legs went sore from walking, you chased from center to center until they closed for the evening.
The night brought no sleep.
Alfred questioned why you were up so early the following day. You couldn’t tell him how your chest ached when you woke up from your nap to find an empty bed; you couldn’t express how even his company filled you with dread. When people questioned who the man with you was, the term butler singed your tongue.
“He’s eaten, right?”
“Yes, Miss.” His voice was stern across the table. “Though ensuring he eats is Bruce’s concern, not yours.”
You didn’t ask again.
Mar had at least responded that day, though late. Some brief exchanges about being moved into the tower, about her going on weeknight dates with Gianna, about needing to set up a date with you next week. You typed out a self-deprecating joke about those being the only dates you’d get, then deleted. It’d be a whole conversation about why Bruce wasn’t romancing you that you couldn’t speak to.
This cloud followed until Bruce’s shower shot icy water into the square of your back that night. Ambery body wash was sudsy in your hands, with iridescent bubbles you were suddenly far too tired to lather onto your skin.
Doing what you could, you finished washing and dragged yourself back to his bed. His cologne had already been faint on the sheets and it was nonexistent now. You’d forgotten how hard it was to be alone and how pathetic it felt to struggle to keep your mind busy for even a few days. It hadn’t even been a fucking week back in Gotham.
Your body kept you up most of the night for the third day in a row. Resolve had worn and the tight sieve opened to an overflowing bucket. The perception of you was now entirely out of your control; your ex friends—and exes, could look you up whenever they wanted, find wherever you were, join in on the hate at any moment. It was a matter of time before someone posted your address, names of family members, the car your dad drove. It hadn’t felt that bad when Bruce was around you.
The bed was worn in on the side closest to the door. You slipped to that side in the middle of the night and contoured to his shape. A headache woke you the next morning and you threw on the closest outfit to make do.
You seized the rare morning Alfred wasn’t in the kitchen and poured a bowl of cereal. Normalcy. A crumb of it. Please.
And it helped, so much so that you went through half a box of frosted mini-wheats.
Movement on the stairs made you rush to the main elevator and press DOWN, scrambling together a plan to meet Rai as you loaded up a rideshare app. Rai’s was the only grounding rod you could think of.
The paparazzi followed your car but you didn't give a shit anymore. Didn’t give a shit pushing through them once they stopped at the curb. Plastered on a smile and rushed through the door to a bell ring and introduction that made your heart melt.
A glance around showed the place was empty, typical for right before lunch. Back when you were a student, this was your only available time between classes to rush over and fill yourself at the deli. Your stomach hurt.
“Thank god. Hi, Rai.”
“Hey girl. Should I ask for your autograph?” Good natured as always, his curls bounced as he laughed.
“That's actually the reason I'm here.” You ran your hands through your hair and tucked into the office behind the counter, keeping the door wide enough to talk to him but out of camera sight.
“Stressing, huh?”
“Things just feel weird.” So exhausted, you almost remembered too late that you were in public; you tried to speak in generalities. “I haven't been very busy this week, and I’m trying to adjust to moving into his place and I feel… off. I don’t know, it feels like so much.”
“Squirrel.”
“Huh?”
He cast you a look like you'd gone mad. It made you acutely aware that you were an exceptionally awful friend who’d forgotten the code.
“Okay, no. I'm not squirreling right now.”
“You got back on Saturday, man. Squirrel.”
“I just feel like I'm doing nothing and I don't know how not to feel like I'm in a fishbowl. A fishbowl with billions of fucking dollars that aren't even mine, it's not even mine!” You threw your hands up, frustrated.
Rai wiped his hands on a small rag and stepped into the office. “If it's not yours, it's not yours to worry about.”
“But I can do something. Anything, really. What do rich people do aside from rich people shit or helping people?”
“So he signed you over to the Wayne fortune, huh?”
“No.” You understood his point but felt too anxious to take it. “I don't know. I can't stop this comparison… the whole drive here I was looking out at the sidewalk at people who used to be me, and I just know if someone like me walked up to me back then and gave me money my life would be changed forever. Even just ten thousand dollars would’ve set me up. Bruce wouldn't even see that gone."
“You're still the person on the sidewalk. That money isn't yours.”
“I know but I have access to it. And people kill themselves from money problems, I could stop people from—”
“So you're playing god?”
“I don't think it's that simple, Rai. I need to do something while I wait for Bruce.”
“Wait for what?”
“I have some things I have to process with him before I can do much of anything.”
A customer came to buy a single bottle of Snapple apple. Would Bruce like that?
Rai made quick work ringing them up and came right around. “Can someone else help you process? Why's he so busy?”
“He just is. And he has very specific knowledge that I need, stuff that's critical to know before making a decision, and in order to do anything with my job I need to know that information, and so I'm stuck either wandering the tower or trying to talk to Mar but you know how she is, she's probably out with friends, I don't even know how she goes out every day,” you took a shallow, rapid breath, just enough to continue. “But some people are just made for this, you know? I'm not. I don't feel equipped to do anything, and I'm just running around town like some kind of fucking fairy trying to fix everything and I can't do that, I know that logically I can't do that,”
“Y/n.”
“But still I'm just doing random shit because I want to help, I do, I don't want people to suffer. I want to do something with my time that's productive. It feels disgusting to sit around and just wait. What am I supposed to do? Go to a movie? A bar? A restaurant? A couple months ago I could barely afford food and now I'm here? Sitting on my ass?”
“You're tired. Accomplish a nap.”
“You do a lot of donating, I thought you'd understand.”
“I do a lot because I took it slow. I didn't burn out.” He crossed his arms, wrinkling the blue shirt he wore every Wednesday. You forgot about that. “I'm not confident anything would be enough though. For you.”
If he'd delivered that any less relaxed, you might've thought he was being rude. “What do you mean?”
“We used to tear those fools apart. Thought they were a joke. Good for nothing richies turning this city to shit.”
Your heart sank. He walked out to the fridges on the floor, grabbed a water, and handed it to you. The chill of the plastic made you sit a little taller. The liquid degunked your throat from the smog.
“When you say that, it’s like you're describing me.”
“Exactly. You can't think like that.”
“How am I supposed to think? I don't want to be one of them.” You strangled the water bottle to abate quivering hands. “If I weren't me I'd hate me.”
I don't want to feel guilty for loving Bruce, either.
“You know where your heart is. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.”
“But it does. I can't be complicit.”
“I can see the bags under your eyes. Let's talk more after you get some shuteye.”
This urgency wouldn't leave your body. You laid back in his loungy office chair, propped your feet up on the desk, and pulled your hood over your head. Suddenly you understood Bruce a lot more.
Waking up in Rai's office was more than jarring; you fell off the chair and slammed your knees into the concrete flooring. Swore a spider got scared out from under the desk and ran toward the wall.
“Good timing.” Rai walked in with a duffel bag. “Deli just closed and every fridge is full. Unless your boyfriend is starving you, you can help that squirreling and drop off the extras at the women's shelter. Should be on the way back.”
You must've taken too long to log any type of reaction, still blinking sleep out of your eyes, because he dropped it with a loud sigh. “Or this is payback for that food I spot you a while ago.”
Oh shit. “Sorry, Rai,”
He wagged his finger at you and shook his head. “A year ago you would've joked back.”
“I don't know. I still feel weird about being here, together with him, publicly. I didn't think I would.”
He clicked the door behind him and lowered his voice, sitting on the edge of one of his desks. “Weren't you two public before that trip?”
“Yes, but…” you quieted too in case some pap had an ultra-mega microphone. “It was… fake. Fake dating. It's a long story. But now it's real and there's videos of us near my hometown…”
While at the bar, a million cameras could’ve surfaced and you would’ve just smiled at them capturing your love. What had you told Bruce then? Let them? He was allowed to live? Why didn’t it feel like that now?
Something lovely about Rai was he didn't pry. “Gotham has teeth. Makes sense you're feeling it; you're the most popular topic the past few days.”
“I don't want to be a topic.”
“It's not fair, but it's not going to change.” His face was set in a sympathetic smile. “You just have to think about if he's worth it.”
“He is.” It fell out of you before conscious thought, but the thought matched it when it caught up. Losing the one person to ever reveal the color of euphoria was an obscene thought.
Rai accepted this answer. “Then you’ll get used to it, don't worry.”
“What if I don't want to get used to it?”
He drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk as he stood up. “You decided to date Bruce Wayne. If low-profile is something you want, it's not with him. He's practically royalty, even trying to hide in the middle of nowhere.”
You fidgeted. Hard to hear, but honest. “I'm just glad you and Mar aren't treating me differently. It’s grounding.”
“I'm not treating you differently because you haven't changed,” he reminded, grabbing a cardboard box to break down. “I'd be worried if you weren't stressed.”
“Because I need to be?”
“No,” Rai chided. “Because it shows you still care. And I'm sure you'll continue to.”
His sureness about your backbone was relieving, and you stepped onto that steady platform to get a breath of air. “You're right, I'm squirreling.”
“Yep.”
As you stood and brushed yourself off he put a hand on your shoulder.
“But if it's ever too much and you need a safe place, come here.”
He held out a pair of keys that looked unused. “I don't want to take your spares.”
“I made them for you. Saw the chaos on the web.” He plopped them on the table and nodded for you to take them. “I want you to have a place to go, day or night. No problem. And that—” he pointed toward the minifridge under the desk where you thought the spider might've hidden behind, “is kept stocked with deli leftovers. Feel free.”
There was that reason you didn't hate Gotham: Rai's goodness. It radiated out of him like sunshine.
You hugged him goodbye and grabbed the duffel, forcing yourself not to tear up so the cameras wouldn't catch it.
You pushed through the crowd with your bag and tried to ignore the flashes of their cameras, their shouting, how the strangers in front of you dodged out your path like a flamethrower. Lowering your gaze, you focused on the cracks in the sidewalk.
This was still your city. Kinda. At least a city you'd be in for a while. A place that knew your loneliness like its own pulse; that knew the sweet electricity of wandering with Bruce; the solace you sought when the west got too dark.
The swing in your step echoed what would come next. City Hall meetings each Thursday, rallies on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Screens that dried your eyes out and fingers tight from typing and researching. Finding that downtime with Bruce to tattoo more memories.
As the street pressed on and the signals remained defective as ever, the line blurred. Being outside of tower walls and actually sitting in the city, tracing the cobbled steps you took before you ever knew him, brought you out of the clouds. You kicked a piece of broken glass off the curbside ramp.
The messiness of the city made you relax, unlike it ever had. You unhunched your shoulders and analyzed the overcast streets. The car lights, the drizzle of rain hitting your bare skin. Glistening dark puddles, the thunk of tires hitting potholes. Some man on his phone ranted about a game, another woman texted while repeatedly pulling a purse up her shoulder. Flashes of light to your right and left, cameras saying your name.
WALK.
A feeling of sonder struck you as you bumped shoulders with a pedestrian and the spotlight effect hushed. She readjusted her purse as she walked past, the man changed subjects on the phone, the signal got dimmer. The world went on without you; you didn’t keep it spinning.
The sign for the women's shelter was very hidden, which you understood, and immediately felt awful about ducking into it with a gaggle of cameras outside. The volunteers asked if you were sent by Rai, recognizing the hot deli food, and you spent the final few minutes gushing about how wonderful he was to the community as you tracked your Uber’s arrival.
It was easier feeling less alien when you weren’t driven by Alfred. It was possible to pretend nothing had changed and you were on your way back to your studio to eat some cold pasta. You rested your head on the chilly window and noticed how strange it was to romanticize a place you’d been so desperate to escape.
The ride up the elevator took eons this go-around. When you got to the kitchen to grab a snack, Alfred startled. You didn't think you'd seen him do that before.
“Didn't know you were out.”
“I just went to visit a friend for a bit.” You swung open the fridge and then stalled, peeking over. “Do I need to notify you when I leave…?”
“It always helps if someone knows where you are, but no. You are not required.”
Dropping the miss, that was interesting. What did his schedule entail on Thursdays? Did he have a long talk with Bruce about you two missing a meeting tonight?
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“Well,” you grabbed a carrot and hummus platter. “I haven't thought that far ahead.”
“Good. You can help me in my study.”
“Oh, I—”
“Should only take an hour.” He pulled out his phone and typed something. “Let’s get this sorted through.”
Alfred was deceptively fast, good god, and you tripped trying to hurry up the stairs after him.
A plethora of jewelry sat out on his desk. Before you could ask, he answered.
“From the Wayne archives. Mrs. Wayne never had the opportunity to wear most of them, but I try to keep the pieces nice and clean in her memory.”
Christ, these looked about a billion dollars each. The diamonds sparkled like water; you'd never seen jewelry this reflective, this expensive, and when Alfred placed a necklace in your hand, that heavy. You quickly handed it back.
One of them stood out to you: a beautiful gold wedding ring. Alfred must've seen you stare at it because he picked it up with a gloved finger.
“Mrs. Wayne was very modest, but she liked a bit of flair.”
He spun it to show the centered oval cut diamond on a mostly plain band, with two simple stud diamonds embedded into the band, evenly spaced on either side.
“It's beautiful.”
Alfred nodded, used some sort of technique to shine it, then tucked it away. It seemed to match her; from photographs, she looked dainty. Were you the most boisterous person to walk these halls?
He handed you a bracelet and a cloth. You reached out to grab it before you realized what he meant, then shied away. “I feel like I'm not qualified to touch them, Alfred.”
“Oh, you certainly are. Bruce gave the OK this morning.”
“I have no idea how to clean jewelry like this,”
“I'll show you.”
And boy did he—for the next hour you learned enough skills to snag a beginner position at a local jeweler. The ultrasonic machine was magic despite there being little to no visible dirt on any of the luxury pieces, and by the time you were finished, you began to squirrel again. You unboxed some of your purchases and placed them about Bruce’s room the rest of the afternoon to distract.
Thursday evening came with utmost relief. Digging around in the fridge, you placed the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner in one section to make your job easier. Tacos weren’t especially romantic, but they were fun to make together and a nice bridge from coast to coast.
On the uppermost floor you revisited the chaise; moonlight threaded between the fibers of the aged curtains and made quite the nook. Wedged between the wall and the cushion sat a book you hadn’t noticed before.
Pushing the furniture away from the wall you pulled out A Study in Scarlet, a Penguin classics edition. A thick layer of dust had accumulated on its face. You settled in after wiping it off on the chaise’s edge and a bookmark nearly slipped out; you turned to its page.
“That was it,” said Lestrade, in an awestruck voice, and we were all silent for a while.
There was something so methodical and so incomprehensible about the deeds of this unknown assassin, that it imparted a fresh ghastliness to his crimes. My nerves, which were steady enough on the field of battle, tingled as I thought of it.
Getting cozy, you turned back to the beginning. It was a 2001 copy; he couldn’t have spent much time with it before his parents died, if he hadn’t read it later.
Bruce must’ve liked it up here. A nice hideaway, just isolated enough to be in one’s own imagination. What had you been doing while he sat here and read mysteries? Did he return here when he was older, or had he abandoned it once the tower went silent?
You made it all the way to Holmes testing the pills on an unknowing canine before drifting off.
“Don't let me wake you, sweetheart.”
An elderly woman wearing a black dress with a lacy white collar smiled at you while she dusted. Her hair was in a kempt gray-white bob.
"Oh, hi," you swung your legs over the edge of the daybed. Smiled at her. Wondered what the hell time it was, wondered why you were so hungry. A book banged to the ground and you scrambled to recover it. “You're—” what the hell was her name?!
“Dory, ma'am. I'm Mr. Wayne's housekeeper. You're Ms. Y/l/n, correct?”
You nodded, rubbing your eyes to rouse yourself. “Yes. Y/n, actually. If you don't mind.”
“Of course not, dear. Mr. Pennyworth told me all about you and Mr. Wayne.”
She thought for a moment and turned to you, away from the bookcase.
“If you could give me your schedule so I can have clothes pressed for you, that would be most convenient.”
She then asked if she might know which room you were staying in—“Bruce's”—and which items you'd like pressed for each event. You told her most of them hadn't arrived yet, but they would in the coming days. You agreed to leave the clothes you'd like pressed and returned in a wicker basket outside of his door.
It was such a strange conversation—you'd seen similar ones the rare times you'd babysat for the kids of your parent's friends, how they'd have a maid swing by and fulfill household tasks. Dory was amicable, but that didn’t make it less bizarre.
You absently spun your bracelet around your wrist as you walked down the stairs to grab your phone. It snagged on your belt loop and you paused, making sure it didn't break and spill out over the marble, your heart racing.
Was it better to preserve the bracelet or wear it out?
The glow of your phone on the nightstand revealed you’d slept for twelve hours. Starved, you sought the kitchen for another round of cereal.
Roses and peonies kept a gorgeous atmosphere, but you couldn’t give them all the credit for your bright spirit. Every thought was lifted by the wind of date-night excitement.
Getting things in order was shockingly fun. First: quick stops at a few places downtown for gifts. Second: setting aside a dress and heels from the new arrivals.
You laid out an outfit for him too, knowing he'd probably come up from the cave covered in car grease and sweat and deserved a shower. Prideful as you were for making it to Friday without completely losing your mind, that impatience lingered.
This tension followed to early evening, when the room was adequately rearranged and your toiletries populated his bathroom. Your attention kept turning to his clothes laid out on his dresser, his uncapped cologne wafting just enough of his scent to tease.
The plush rug under his bed soothed your tired feet, serenading you towards scuttling under the covers. His comforter was heavy and thick, inviting just enough pressure for your eyes to flutter shut and lewd thoughts to tempt you.
The door was open a crack so you couldn't exactly do all that you wanted. You let your body relax, resting into his smell, your skin hot with the memory of his touch. Between layers of his bedsheets you slid your hand between your thighs, began to picture all he might do tonight, how much you’d missed each other and all the ways it could be expressed. Slowly.
The first time in his bed needed to be slow.
You turned your head into the pillow and stifled a moan. His whispers vibrated in your ear like he was here, as he instructed you to touch yourself and you pretended to hate following orders, as he teased about your goosebumps giving you away, that you got off to this, running his fingers down your sensitive throat down to your belly where he'd grip your hips, ask you to spell out what you wanted, to use your words; oh, you needed him to call the shots tonight, in his room, his mattress, please...
A knock made you jump. Dory's weathered, warm voice rang from just beyond the doorway. “Miss Y/n, I pressed some of you and Mr. Wayne's clothing. I'll leave it folded at the door. Would you like any help before I leave for the day?"
“Uh,” you sat up and pressed the heel of your palm to your forehead, your heart rate stuttering. “I don’t think so, no. Thank you though—Dory! Have a good night!”
It was half past five. You hustled to get ready, slamming in earrings and speeding on makeup after slipping into your dress and heels.
All light had already left and the moon wasn't high enough to shine into the kitchen yet. You switched a couple overhead lights on and got to making the tortillas, stressing at the clock waiting for the dough to rise as time bled into six. At which point, you heard every shift of the tower and turned toward each sound with mounting intrigue.
You finished making the tortillas around six thirty. By six forty you had your phone out on the table, writing a quick text before going back to the meat on the stove.
Hey babe, everything's ready! If it's going to be much longer, let me kn
The elevator clunked open and you dashed out of your seat. His hair hung limp, his clothes wore baggy on his frame. His shirt had a ripped collar and holes scattered throughout the chest. Hugging him was a crisp pool in the desert.
Giddy, you stepped back to look at him. Those same gorgeous blue eyes, his textured skin with its little lines. It was worth it. It would always be worth it.
“Bruce, oh my god I’m happy to see you.” Your smile bit into your cheeks. As you scanned his face and came back to Earth, his expression looked… upset. In his clenched right hand was a tan folder, but otherwise he had nothing else on him.
“What's that for?” you asked, walking to the table to push the candle in a foot. His overshirt was far too flowy.
“A case.”
He sounded like sandpaper. You were too excited to slow down.
“I have an outfit laid out for you upstairs, only if you'd like to change. Don't have to, but might want to get cleaned up if it's more comfortable?”
Bruce shook his head. “I'm alright.”
Transitioning from the cave to date night couldn’t be easy, especially after a week. Gifts might help with that. Bring him into the space, ground him to it. “I got you some things.”
You grabbed the box from his tablesetting and held it out for him to take. His morose didn’t shift, but he did look down at it.
“I know the public knows that we're together,” you started, pulling apart the velvet ribbon to unpack it. Lifting the lid revealed a thin silver bracelet. “But they don't know the real us, you know? This way we can have something similar but not give too much away to them.”
He absently held out his wrist, almost dazed. You undid the homemade one and gently placed it in the designer box. He stammered when he spoke. “What about those ones?”
“I figured we could keep the other bracelets here, wear them on our private dates. Wear them around the house—Tower.” you corrected, feeling heat spread across your face as you clicked it onto his wrist. “It's just to keep them safe, you know? I'm not overthinking things, I'm…” You took a deep breath.
A second bracelet materialized from the box and you held out your wrist, grinning.
“My turn, babe.”
His expression flickered at the pet name. Good. He was getting acclimated.
“The paparazzi, the public, I'm starting to deal with it better, actually.” Butterflies flew when he righted the bracelet and ensured it hung well on your wrist. You continued, smiling as his fingers grazed your skin. “It'll take more time to feel it out, but it doesn't have to make me spiral.”
He didn't linger past that, immediately moving his hands to his sides. Something was off, he was stilted.
You looked into his eyes against the rising tide of anxiety. For him to act like this off the heels of what was, for all intents and purposes, a honeymoon, was unsettling. Shouldn’t he have more joy at reconnecting?
You turned back to the stove when you smelled something burning. Perhaps explaining more to him would help? “I just want some things to still be ours. I figured you could understand that better than anyone.”
You moved the meat off the heat and made an appreciative comment about the rosé and how he remembered so much. He didn’t move from across the kitchen.
“I made tacos. I thought we could put the fixings on them together—oh my god, I almost forgot.” You licked your finger that had some seasoning on it and spun around, hurrying to the hallway and arriving with a bouquet of midnight calla lilies.
“Since you were so generous with your flower-giving, I figured it was only fair to get some for you. And not only fair,” you stumbled through the gift, hyperaware of and equally confused why you were fumbling. Your body held the same nerves as public speaking.
“You know, just… yeah. I want to give them to you. I don't know. I'm feeling kinda like, flustered? After our time apart?”
Bruce’s face kept flat but he took the flowers. He took the flowers.
You rushed to get out the tortillas. “I forgot to ask, are you okay with corn? I made some flour tortillas just in case, I don't know which you prefer.”
His response was walking toward the kitchen island and gingerly placing the flowers. You swallowed and shifted the subject.
“Later I'll need your help figuring out what to do about the Gazette situation.”
This one made him reply.
“Did something happen with Vry?”
His voice sounded drier now that he had to project it. This was easier, he was talking.
“No, no. I've just been wondering if I should go independent.” Since he didn't answer, you just chose corn. The oil sizzled when you placed one on the pan. “At the rally, March didn't want to meet with me unless I was solo. And with Dr. Vry already firing me once, I mean, I guess that was before she knew we were dating, before we were,”
He waited until you finished building a taco before responding.
“I never asked: why did you leave Gotham after Vry fired you last month?”
“Because she fired me… I told you.” You added another tortilla to the oil. Thank god the conversation was getting more casual.
“I know that. But leaving immediately?”
“Yeah.” You took a swig of water, careful not to smudge your lipgloss as best you could. He sounded strained.
“My mom was leaving on a cruise and I didn't want Debbie to have to take care of Walter. She can be so loud, and Gotham was honestly really depressing me,”
“What were you thinking about?”
He hurried that question out, barely waiting for you to finish.
“I don't know, I really just want to get eating.” You flipped a second taco. “This was a convo for later, remember? We have a date to get to.”
“Did you come back the day of my attempt?”
That was what felt so weird: he sounded like fucking Batman.
“I came back a few days before. Wanted to research for the interview.”
“Is that all you did the days before? Research?”
“I think so.” A third taco, en route.
“Think so?”
His tone gave you pause.
“Why?” You added more meat to the tortilla, wishing you hadn't waited for him to arrive so things weren’t so rushed. “Did something come back about your attempt?"
He continued like you hadn't spoken. You couldn't look at him because the oil started to pop. “Did you go anywhere before that Thursday? On Wednesday? Before the meeting? Tuesday?”
“I met with Dr. Vry to grab supplies right before the meeting, but that's it. I wanted to have the best questions so I took my time.”
“Why did you want the best questions?”
“It was your first interview. I knew every eye in the world would be on it.”
“And what did that feel like?”
“What did what—”
“What did it feel like knowing it would be popular?”
You shrugged. “Scary. Good.”
“Why?”
You decided he must've seen stuff in the press; he’d seen the viral posts and came up to have a hard conversation when it didn’t need to be one. His anxiety about you getting hurt was endearing, but he couldn’t keep you in a box. You’d already reassured him to hell and back.
“I promise, I'm fine with the press. And one day it'll feel super normal, I'm sure. Or a version of it.”
You turned the heat down and soothed a corner of your finger that got hit by rogue EVOO.
“You did nothing but research those days before my attempt?”
You peeked over your shoulder and he stared into you with a squeezed brow. Wanting to bend the mood back, you half-laughed. “Absolutely nothing. Life was riveting. And I got back on Monday I think.”
“You think?”
“Bruce.” You spun around and gave him a look. His stare didn’t shift. “I don't know. I'm pretty sure I didn’t go anywhere, yes. As for what I did, I just stayed in my apartment. Cleaned stuff up.”
“You said you researched.”
“I didn't spend every waking moment at my computer, I also thought I was leaving later that week, so. I cleaned some. But that's it.”
He paused. You worked to assemble a few more tacos.
“Did you do anything the days after, then? The two days after?”
“No. Not outside of the stuff with you.” you replied. “Trying to keep you alive.”
“You didn't go anywhere but to Wayne Tower and back?”
“No… Actually, I might've gone to Rai's. Maybe. I don't know. It's fuzzy.” You snuck a bite of the cooked meat and added a touch more salt.
“Why is it fuzzy?”
“Why wouldn't it be? I was terrified you were gonna die.”
At this point he had properly frustrated you. This wasn't how you wanted to start date night.
“Did you go anywhere else? Anywhere southwest?” He continued his questions without apology and no sign of stopping.
If he was ruminating on that night, you wouldn’t let it carry on. Retracing his steps, stressing, it wouldn’t do him good. Was that why he looked so haggard? Had this been the thing on his mind all week? He kept looking at the clock like he couldn’t wait to get back down there.
“No, I didn’t. And you look wiped out. We should eat.”
“What'd you do after I left your apartment that night? After the interview?”
“Right before your attempt?” You wondered how much longer to humor him for.
“Yes. After I left, what did you do?”
“Bruce, you said you didn't want to relive it. You haven't eaten a proper meal in days for all I know—”
“When I left your apartment after doing the written interview what did you do the rest of the night? The whole night until morning?”
You slowed. Was it something with Oz?
His stare was unrelenting. He hadn't looked at you like that since—
“The night of my attempt. After I left. What did you do until morning?”
An uncomfortable pang banged around your stomach. This wasn't the warmth you'd wanted, this wasn’t how the evening was supposed to go. “I stayed home. I wrote the interview out, it took all night. I barely slept before I had to wake up and turn it in.”
“After I left, you never stepped outside of your apartment until the next morning when you went directly to GU campus?”
“After you left, I never stepped outside of my apartment until the next morning when I went directly to GU campus, yes.” It was challenging not to snap at him. “Can we eat now?”
He didn't ask anything after that and you didn't bother to check how he reacted. You still had a handful of tortillas and a bit more meat, the only one seemingly invested in this ‘date’.
“Originally my plan was for us to cook these together but you didn't end up coming up until forty minutes into our date. That's pretty late, dude.”
Why did you sound so… peeved? Suddenly your skin lit up like ants. You shoved the meat into a taco shell and felt hot tears sting your lashline.
“Y/n, I know.”
You wiped your eyes. It stung for him to be late, fuck. It stung for him to grill you when all you wanted was to connect, to be let in. “You know, but do you care?”
Bruce scoffed behind you; you had a physical reaction to the sound. “Of course I care about that.”
“Well if your way of showing it is getting all quiet and stiff, I don't fucking appreciate it.”
“How am I supposed to act?”
“That sounds really defensive, Bruce.”
“Why don't you care that I know?”
“We both know, the clock's right there.”
“Alfred told you?”
“No, he didn’t.” A tortilla split in the pan, sending sizzles of oil up to your hand. You cursed and grabbed a spatula. “So you knew earlier and didn't tell me? I could’ve waited on these bullshit tacos.”
He was doing it again, folding into himself and disregarding everything else. Your heel clacked against the porcelain tiles as you tried to burn off the anxiety.
“I knew if I came up earlier, I might stop looking.” His sigh was shaky. “I couldn’t see you until I knew. Not until I was sure. I needed to know if… if there was a way it wasn’t… any other reason to explain it.” He trailed off, exasperated. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
His voice had a hue it'd never had before—Jersey. It slipped into the edges and curves of his words. You softened; Bruce was always concerned with being the perfect boyfriend, these were the first days of something so scary to him. He didn’t need to wrack himself with guilt.
“Bruce, it’s not that big of a deal. Let's just eat and—”
From the corner of your vision his devastation shifted to a glare, his tone incredulous. “Not that big of a deal?”
“I just snapped and I didn't mean to, I'm sorry. We're both upset right now so let's just put it behind us. Start fresh, alright?”
“Why are you so casual about this?”
Being late to a date wasn’t a cardinal sin. If you looked at it another way, the fact this felt high stakes was good: it meant you both cared.
“What happened happened. We haven't interacted in a while; all we need is some time together to smooth it over. You still love me, I still love you.”
You took a second to breathe.
“When I said I love you, I didn't know you tried to kill me.”
A hunk of taco meat fell onto the stovetop as his statement fizzed through you. You whirled around.
“What?”
“It's all here.” Bruce took the manila folder and plopped it on the table.
When you gave him a wary look, he didn't falter. If the mood were any less dour, you might’ve thought he was playing a sick joke.
Bewildered, you approached the folder and flipped it open. Your name was centered and bolded; italicized underneath were the words Active / Susp. of: Aggravated Assault, Conveying False Information, Trespassing, Attempted Murder: 2nd Degree.
“I don't understand.”
“What don't you understand?”
You turned the page to a dense list of items precisely labeled as: Evidence.
Suspect matches latent prints and hair sample found at scene. Victim wounds do not corroborate self-injury.
The remainder of the first page was purely clinical, detailing sample testing and demographics with a byline for each potential sentence. He was miserably silent, leaving only the sound of your heart thumping.
“Bruce, I didn't—I didn't do this.” Your hands shook as you clumsily thumbed through dozens of interactions with him over the past few months. “Killing you? It doesn't—no, this isn't—I don't get it. What do you mean? Like, I tried to fucking murder you—? No. No.”
“Explain it to me then. How were your prints there? Why did you wait a month after that night to bring me back to Gotham? Why’d you extend our trip after calling Crane?”
It was hard to see the words as your vision clouded. When you turned to a page labeled Index, printed screenshots of your call log and internet history were highlighted with the same timestamps as everything else. You couldn't swallow any of it, the words blurring and leaving.
You gripped the back of a chair to steady yourself. The noiseless tower sent a shiver up your spine, your knuckles working the glazed wood.
“Do you really think I pushed you?”
Your voice rang hollower than anything had in the tower.
“Knowing damn well your apartment complex only keeps footage for thirty days. That the second you got off the phone with him you searched prison sentences, Blackgate—what did your friend say? Did she promise to keep it a secret?”
“Bruce, I didn’t think—I didn’t think about—nothing. None of that is related, I didn’t do this.” Your head spun, unable to form a coherent thought.
“How did that come out again? When you ‘confessed’ to the ‘lie’? How did you say it? You panicked when it slipped.”
“I don’t remember.” You couldn’t breathe. “I don’t know anything right now.”
Bruce gave you a long, weighted stare. The stillness ate you alive by the time he turned around.
“Meet me in the garage.”
You dashed after him and wedged yourself in front of the elevator. Air fell out of you in buckets. “Bruce.”
He winced. You tried to look in his eyes but he wouldn't make contact, his face twitching on the verge of tears. When he wouldn't respond you grabbed his arm and he flinched away.
Adrenaline coated every thought.
“Let's—let's talk about it, okay? I’ll calm down, let’s just take a minute so I can breathe. We can figure out how it happened. They found my prints on some pole at the scene? Some doorknob? My hair there? How often are those false matches? And the timing, the calls, the lie, and the stuff with Aaron, and my searches, um,” you mentally reviewed the murky memory of flipping through the pages. “All those conversations you listed, they, they're not that, not like that at all, you know, um,"
Goddammit, you still couldn't think!
A last hail-mary, a final desperate attempt to squeeze some air into collapsing lungs. You knew that fucking look of his, except its lines were even deeper and more resigned than out on your back porch.
“Everything in there has a context. It's an awful misunderstanding.”
“Is it now?”
“Yes, I promise. Can we just sit down?”
That word, ‘promise’—he shuddered when you said it.
You attempted to touch his wrist but he stepped away. Was anything even real right now?
“We've got to go.”
He looked cold. Distant. Like the version of Bruce telling you to scram from that alleyway and never come back.
Except that felt better. That felt so much better than this.
“We need to get on the same page. Obviously something convinced you—”
“And what would getting on the same page mean?”
Your hands felt emptier than they ever had now that he'd rejected them. It filled you with intolerable feelings that started to bleed out. “That I obviously didn't do it. That it's ridiculous to think—”
“Ridiculous?”
“Fucking ridiculous, yeah! I don't know why you'd believe some shit like that—”
“Trying to convince me I'm wrong again?”
His voice was thin as it had been at The Moore.
Fuck. He was right there, touchable, yours, but he wouldn't allow it. You reached for Bruce again, gently, and he avoided it.
“No, I'm so jumbled right now, I just don't understand why that would make sense to you, that's all, so obviously we need to talk about it and get on the same—”
“It's all in that case file you want to dismiss.”
“Those are—no, we need to sit and talk it over because those are—”
His step back became a hard step forward. “You need to start being honest with me.”
“I am being honest! If we could talk—”
“At this point it's not a question of if, but why—”
“Why would I do something like—”
“I can think of a dozen reasons—”
“Like what? I love you, I would never—”
He counted on his fingers at rapid speed. “Fame; security; sympathy; money; revenge—”
“Who do you think I am—”
“I don't know!”
It was impossible for that one not to leave a mark; you gritted your teeth and hurled back, “You know me. If you don't know me, then no one—”
“Why did you do it?”
“I didn't do—”
“I don't know who you think you're fooling right now,”
You could excuse yourself and allow you both to cool down; being this dysregulated was no state to argue in. But at this point you didn't know if you were stretching out the argument just so he'd come closer, not knowing what might happen if either of you left this room.
Still, you needed to diffuse this before he ran. Maybe something more was going on with him; maybe you needed to state it all directly.
“I'm not fooling anyone. I love you and I would absolutely never—”
“Did you think you got away with it? Or did you think I'd forgive you if you made me love you first?”
The wind knocked out of you. “None of that,”
He glanced at the clock and opened his mouth; you interrupted despite the nausea ravaging, feeling him slipping through your fingers.
“Can you let me talk?!”
He pushed past you. “We're almost late.”
“What are you talking about? Come on—”
You yanked at the tail of his shirt and he easily stepped out of your sweaty grasp.
“Are you serious? Just dropping this on me—I can’t think.” You braced your hands on your thighs and bent forward, breathing through a straw. You righted too quickly and a sharp gasp came out with your exhale. “I just need fucking five minutes, please.”
“Can you say anything other than you didn’t do it? Anything about your evidence at the scene?”
You blinked to clear your vision. Bruce looked pleading, brows knit, begging. Your hands slapped to your sides, your very blood drained out of you.
“I didn’t leave my apartment. I didn’t do it.”
His eye contact was staggering; if you’d been in your body it would’ve taken you out of it. Your truth glanced off of him.
Bruce grabbed the folder, turned off the stove, and headed for the rickety elevator. “We’ve got to go.”
“Where are we going?” The only reason your feet followed was a desperate desire not to lose contact. He walked so fast he made a breeze.
“Cases like these require evaluation.” The door opened without him breaking stride. “I’m taking you to Arkham.”
pairing: bruce wayne x reader
summary: you made a bet with bruce on a night out, and he has no intention of losing.
tags: established relationship, sexual tension, dancing, teasing, nipple play, clubbing, light exhibitionism, grinding
word count: 1.3k
a/n: my classes started this month so i wrote this to distract myself from thinking about it. hope you like it!!
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I’m aware.”
It wasn’t the first time you’d said it tonight.
Bruce traced his finger along the rim of his glass, taking another sip as you watched his Adam’s apple bob. The gin was dry, but the faint citrus finish offered a small mercy on the finish.
“No, seriously, Bruce,” you shouted over the music.
Your insistence on checking in on him was building something up inside him, like a bottle of champagne about to pop. It was comforting, sure, but it was also a challenge.
“Backing out?”
“I just don't want you to be uncomfortable.”
Bruce set the empty glass back on the bar cart.
The club was packed tonight. Twice as crowded as it usually was on the nights he, well, Batman paid a visit. It was funny how the public had polar opposite reactions depending on which version of him was spotted.
He stepped back toward you.
“You made a bet.”
“You don’t need a hundred dollars,” you countered, but you looped your arms around his neck anyway as he closed the gap.
“Who knows,” he murmured, leaning his forehead against yours. “Maybe I do.”
The truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to pull this off. He could dance; he’d taken a thousand ballroom lessons years ago. He’d taken acting, too, which certainly helped with body control. And if he could dance then, he could dance now. He just hadn't figured out how to do it for you yet.
Your body moved to the music perfectly. Light, natural, hitting every beat of the bass with impeccable timing, as if your body and the melody were one. Bruce’s body moved back and forth like the sound waves were only partially reaching him.
He tested the waters first, a slight tilt of his head, a shift of his shoulders. He could vibe to it. If he were in the cave, just mindlessly enjoying the music, this is how he’d do it.
But he wasn't in the cave, was he?
He could feel the mix of disbelief and anticipation buzzing in your body. He moved with you, left, right, left, falling into your rhythm, letting his body loosen up. The VIP was empty save for the two of you, but anyone on the floor below could see almost everything he did up here.
He took a step back, breaking the embrace but keeping eye contact. Your eyes darted immediately to his torso. Bruce stifled a laugh. You really can’t be subtle, can you?
He slowly undid the first button of his black dress shirt. If he’d wondered earlier if wearing a dress shirt to a club was overkill, he was glad he had now."
Bruce's shadow stretched over you under the frenetic lights. His fingers lingered at the edge of the open fabric, brushing the pale, scarred skin of his chest.
One button. He swallowed. It was just you and him here.
The purple neon pulsed, illuminating your face as you stared at his hands, your body completely ignoring the music now.
Two buttons. You arched an eyebrow. He bit the inside of his cheek.
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”
“I’m fine right here,” you replied, licking your lips.
Shyness be damned.
He gave a small, disapproving headshake. Then traced his index down the seam of the fine linen and popped the third button.
“Feeling brave, Bruce?” Your hand slid slowly up his torso, eager to undo the rest.
Bruce gave a soft tsk-tsk and nudged your fingers back down.
“You’re the one trying to get me to quit.”
The music shifted to something heavier, a bassline that vibrated through the glass floor of the VIP.
Bruce started with a slow roll of his hips, a soft movement that traveled down his body, echoing the beat. Your body was eager to respond, but you only rested your hands over his shoulder, letting him lead.
Bruce followed the rhythm. He channeled every lesson his former tutors had ever taught him. At its core, every dance is the same; dance with your hips, not your shoulders; remember, it's only you in the room.
Well, only you and him.
Bruce pulls you closer by your lower back, locking your bodies together. The heavy bass thrummed through his chest as he grinds his hips against yours. He feels you tighten your grip around his neck.
Again. Again. Again. Every slow roll of his lower body against yours sends a shiver down his spine.
Bruce grinds against you once more, feeling you squeeze your whole body against him, your breasts pressed against his chest. He bit back a needy moan.
The sides of his shirt hung open now, revealing his chest, and your flushed face gave him the courage to push it just a little bit further.
Bruce catches your hands, pulling them down his torso with agonizing slowness. His fingers guided yours, tracing the lines of his body, pausing at every scar he knew lay beneath.
“You’re good at this,” your voice was like honey in his ear.
“You like it?” Bruce leaned closer, inhaling your perfume.
You made him want to go much further.
He led your right hand to the fourth button. Feeling you hesitate, he gently started to guide you.
“Baby...” you warned.
He let out a low chuckle. “Go on.”
Your fingers flew from the fourth to the fifth, then the sixth. His free hand hooked your thigh, pulling it around his waist.
“You’re so gorgeous, Bruce”
“Hmm.”
Seventh. Eighth. He could feel the bite of the air conditioning against his bare chest now.
“You are.”
“You’re usually more creative with your words,” Bruce nipped at your neck, using the dim light to hide his own flushed face. “You manage it just fine at home.”
“You know you’re fucking hot,” you snapped back. Your fingers brushed the final buttons, right where his happy trail began. “You know I want to fuck you.”
Bruce's lips traced a slow path from the curve of your neck to your earlobe.
“So why don't you?”
The collision was instant. Your tongue met his with a restless hunger, exploring every corner of his mouth as he gave you everything you wanted to take.
A groan escaped Bruce's throat as your teeth nipped his lower lip, his palm gripping your waist. You bit down again, and a laugh vibrated in his chest. You were doing it again, giving him that familiar fervor that raced through his body, spiked his pulse, and sent a shot of adrenaline straight to his—
Bruce’s back hit the railing of the VIP. He could see the crowd below in his peripheral vision. From the way you wavered, he knew you could see them too.
He rolls his shoulders, letting the shirt slide down his toned arms. Tomorrow, he’ll have the Wayne Enterprises PR team kill every headline calling him a junkie party-boy heir. Today, he wants to give you this.
“Bruce,” you grinned. “Holy shit.”
Two steps forward and your body was glued to his again.
You leaned in, and he anticipated your teeth against his collarbone. Instead, your tongue swiped across his right nipple. Bruce gasped so loud even the music couldn't drown it out.
“Ahh,” His hands clutched at you for an anchor; grabbing at your hips, your thighs, anything he could hold onto.
You shifted, sucking his other nipple hard between your teeth. He cursed when you pulled away.
“We should go,” you murmured, a thin trail of saliva connecting your lips to his skin as you pulled back. “I don’t want your fans getting jealous.”
“Do I get my hundred dollars?” he teased, a mischievous glint in his eye.
Bruce’s heart raced when the sound of your sweet laughter echoed over the bass. You ducked your head, hiding your face in your hand in a carefree attempt to catch your breath.
“You’re getting a little too good at this ‘Brucie’ thing.”
He mirrors your grin, leaning in to plant a kiss at your flushed cheekbone.
a/n: far too few fics of him so i had to make my contribution! #KneelForNeil
"You still have tonight off?"
"Yep." Neil polished off his toast, following it with a swig of water from a repurposed highball glass; you stared much too long at his wet lips. "Have any ideas for date night?"
Many—one scenario of which came to you in a dream after last night's reading session. As afternoon crept into evening, the draw was too great to not indulge it.
"I had a dream last night…" was how you introduced it. He cocked a brow at you and pressed his hip into the counter as he listened, nodding at all the right times. It wasn't the first time you'd dreamt about fucking Neil, but it was certainly different to how the sex usually was.
Doting, worshipping, extensive. Those were words you'd use to describe it if you were ever asked. It hadn't exactly been what you anticipated; his playful cockiness was what endeared you to him initially, but that rarely dominated the bedroom.
Until tonight.
It was funny how things shifted; Neil was a force and personality in the workplace, out with friends, engaging with the general public; so much so that the thrill was usually seeing it slip away in the sheets. Making the socialable, suave man stutter and blush, you calling every shot with little resistance. To now…
"To clarify," he began, appearing to mull over an intensive mission request. You wrung your hands below the table as he recited your desire to be a little mean to each other tonight, a little bratty. You detailed your desire for him to control the room; to be patronizing, mocking, arrogant, rough—you emphasized slapping being on the table, which made him initially hesitate.
"Yes." You bit the inside of your lip to stave off your enthusiasm, twirling the ring on your finger.
"I'm not too sure of my thoughts on slapping," he mused, like his job wasn't notorious for its violence; well, the threat of it, anyway.
"I'll tell you if I don't like anything. Please…" your breath caught in your throat at the fantasies burned into your thoughts. "I trust you. I'll tell you 'no' or 'stop' if it's upsetting."
"Alright, darling." Neil tossed back the rest of his glass and set it in the sink with an ahh. "Sounds exciting."
When you got up and walked through the kitchen doorway he called after you.
"Right now?"
You admired him from over your shoulder. "Whenever you step into our room it starts."
A red mesh babydoll skimmed your skin, its oversized satin bow holding you up in lieu of an actual bra. You'd foregone the thong, but it wasn't like he'd be the wiser. He'd never seen this set before.
Sitting up on your knees with your hands flat to your thighs was how you imagined it. Your heart raced just as it had in fantasy. By the time he arrived, the bedroom was draped in summertime dusk and you were practically vibrating.
Neil stepped in slowly.
Oh so slowly.
His eyes glided over your lingerie; he took in your position at the edge of the mattress closest to the door, your wide eyes, pliant demeanor.
The door clicked shut. His warm voice with its British lull broke the silence. "So eager."
You nodded and he shook his head, taking his sweet time undoing his belt. The clink of the buckle and his unflinching gaze made you sit to attention; the thick leather sliding against itself made your thighs spread apart an inch.
A soft sound must've slipped out because he responded. "Mm-mm. Relax."
Focusing on his deft fingers working the top button of his pants rapidly melted your patience. Your composure cracked when you noticed a peek of his soft, blonde happy trail. "Please?"
He shot a measured glance at you and moved to calmly rebuckle—as if he'd never planned to take it off at all. "I'll take my time, darling."
Neil moved about the room like someone on a mission—cataloging each piece of furniture and every item strewn along the floor. It was too much to bear when he circled the bed, tracing his fingers along the wooden frame just inches from you.
"Room's a mess," he commented, plucking a shirt off the ground and turning it palm to palm. It was almost a scold—hell, it probably was one and you were just too horny to care.
Another shirt, a pair of pants, a sock. Was now really the time for this?
"A little."
He paused in his stoop for another shirt, his gaze locking on you. He maintained that pointed stare until your breathing shifted, convinced he was about to fling his pants off and pounce on you.
Rather, he gave you a casual once-over and resumed cleaning, muttering "A little." as he tossed clothes into the basket. The ghost of a smile on his lips made your heart flutter.
"Most of the clothes are yours anyway."
Whenever you spoke, he'd study you. He caught every part of the arousal you tried to stave off, each attempt to metabolize his teasing. His attention flitted to you fisting the sheets and he laughed to himself. The house never seemed so quiet.
He flipped the lid on the laundry basket and tapped his fingers mindlessly along the dresser. His sigh was titillating, but not unperformative—watching him try on dominance might've been cute if it your pulse wasn't thrumming between your thighs. "I was up early, love. All of this cleaning is… taxing."
Waiting is taxing.
"Might have to take care of yourself tonight."
Such. A. Fucking. Tease.
"Neil. Please, baby."
Your fingers strangled the hem of your babydoll until your knuckles bloomed light. After a passing glance, he went back to admiring the edge of the dresser.
"I need you inside me."
He pouted his lower lip out and pretended to consider it. Your vision went slightly hazy, the plush mattress pulling you toward a dream. Neil gestured toward you as he leisurely pulled up his sleeves. "You can start."
You laid down and placed your hand between your legs, shocked at how sensitive you were. The lingerie gifted beautiful friction across your breasts, which was a plus.
His laugh sparked through you. "That desperate?"
"Yes." Every crumb of shame left your body at the unapologetic sound of your fingers on your clit filling the staticky space between you.
"If you don't hurry," you warned, feeling your body light up. "I'll—"
His response was swift. "No, you won't."
Just firm enough of a tone to temper your pace.
Neil, as if he had hours to kill at an airport, continued wandering about the room while you touched yourself. It wasn't like you could do much without climaxing; you ghosted your fingers along your vulva while you studied him.
He thumbed through the book at your bedside table, flipping to the dogeared pages you'd pored over the night prior. He set it down with spread pages, using the table as a bookmark.
He approached the bed and flexed his fingers. "Can—"
Neil's attention flicked up to you and he cleared his throat. He dragged one finger up your entrance to your clit, wavering over where you'd just drawn circles. "You're soaked, sweetheart."
He sounded disgusted.
Your breath caught, dizzied. Exactly like your dream.
"Come on," you egged. "Don't make me wait."
"You get off on this, don't you?" His assertion had no hesitance, no hedging. His fingers stilled. "I'm fairly convinced you fancy waiting."
"I don't, I swear," you begged, the warmth of his fingers separating from you. "Neil, I need this."
"What's gotten into you?"
Fuck. He'd never looked at you so accusingly.
"Don't act like you don't get off on this too."
A thrill rippled through you talking back.
Neil was arrogant—argumentative too, yes, though he always knew his place. But holy fuck…
His grip tightened on the bedpost, his knuckles working around it. You were just close enough for the throw of his honey cologne. "Accusations, accusations."
Another leer rolled off your tongue. "Am I wrong, sweetheart?"
"Such a brat."
In a tone equally honeyed and arousingly firm. The last shreds of decorum in you wobbled.
"Learned from the best."
His hot hands, smooth but calloused, grazed the satin trim at the apex of your thigh. His fingertips drew swirls across your leg, now sensitized from goosebumps.
"Did I ask you to stop?"
"You think you can boss me around?"
"Can't I?" He cocked his head.
"Pretty cocky for someone leaving their fiancée hanging."
"We both know you'd wait for me."
God, he wasn't wrong. Like calling you pathetic without saying the word.
He stepped from the bed like he sought to keep cleaning and your heart leapt out of your chest.
"Does that make you hard? Is that why you believe it?"
It was an effective grappling hook; Neil leaned over the bed in an instant.
"Says the person with her hand between her legs."
It was difficult under his searing eye contact, but you managed to speak. "I'm only doing as I'm told."
"So am I, doll. Carry on." He stepped from the bed to grab the rest of the laundry. Despite shutting the bin. Despite how even moving your fingers away from your vulva was an obscenely wet sound. He smirked when he heard it.
Could he be any more gorgeously annoying?
Begging had only made the problem worse—when you discussed wanting him to dom harder when you acted bratty, you thought it might involve some rougher action, not just lead-up.
You sat up on your elbows and peered at him. "Aren't you supposed to be in charge?"
He continued like you hadn't spoken.
"Probably don't even know how to dom, that's why you're stalling."
Neil glared at you and headed to the ensuite bathroom. Just when you thought he might indulge a hot shower or bath to keep you waiting until you screamed, he emerged with wet hands and a hand towel.
"Feeling confident tonight, are we Y/n?"
Cheeky motherfucker.
"At least one of us is."
"You're unbelievable."
He stepped too close and you slapped him hard across the cheek. Your palm stung, the apple of his cheek was red, and the only sound was his sharp, pained inhale. You thought maybe this time would be different than the others—perhaps he'd stifle his enthusiasm and play it off, but no. Glittery eyes admired you, his grin so wide it pinched his cheek.
You slapped him again, throwing more force into it; you bit your tongue to abate a curse as the ache radiated to your wrist.
"Spread your legs," he demanded, moving swiftly to the foot of the bed.
You weren't about to fight him on that.
He fluffed the lace of your babydoll onto your stomach and grazed your vulva, teasing the entrance with the tips of his fingers. It was ridiculously mesmerizing and you nearly forgot about the power struggle you'd set up until he put his finger to his mouth with a shh:
"Be quiet or I'll stop."
Fingering was your favorite; it had been so before Neil, but his fingers elevated the whole affair. When he was especially moody before an exhausting mission, you'd joke about making sure he didn't injure his hands 'at the very least'.
Not holding back this time, he did that fucking euphoric come here motion until you felt slick splash down your inner thighs. As he worked his fingers in and out of you, your resolve dwindled. You'd do whatever he wanted if he kept making you feel like this.
The fantasy felt ludicrously tangible. It was becoming impossible to remain quiet against the pulses of pleasure flaring up your core, wanting oh so fucking badly to let it out of your system, to speak!—
"Of course you like this."
He circled your clit and his name fell out of your mouth. Neil pulled back instantly.
"No!" you gasped, and his focus lasered on you, the facade breaking.
"You want to stop, darling?"
Breaking the act gave you vertigo. You reassured him it was an accident and to continue—you were simply wonderfully overwhelmed by his teasing.
"It just feels so good I don't want it to stop,"
"But you were so cruel before," he purred, willing your back to arch as his fingertips grazed the pearl of your clit. "I don't know if you deserve it."
"I don't," you begged. Neil nodded in the slit of your vision. "I don't deserve it."
"That's right," he agreed and dipped two fingers into your pussy, his voice drawing soothing, tender. "But I'll make an exception just this once…"
He arched his fingers to your g-spot and groaned when your thighs shook. He worked his fingers deeper until you gasped, wriggling your hips at the stunning fullness. Following the movement in your hips, he fluttered his fingers until your head fell back.
"See what happens when you listen?"
Yes, but you couldn't get the word out. The ceiling blurred in and out of focus with each thrust of his fingers.
"But we can't have you arriving too soon, can we?"
Fuck.
Neil pushed it further, threading endless moans out of you. You were surprised he let you get away with it. As the sparks brightened and you swore you levitated above the bed, he hummed a question.
"Would you like a taste?"
Unsheathing left you awfully empty and vaguely disoriented. He waited for your nod to lean the soft weight of his body between your legs, then pushed two fingers into your mouth.
You accomodated him eagerly, staring at him as you sucked the length of his middle and index fingers. They were warm and slick, their slight saltiness making you crave the taste of him. Without anything inside you, your focus channeled to your next move. To brat or not to brat?
He cursed when you bit down and left a warning tap on your cheek. You'd slapped yourself harder doing your skincare every night. It hadn't even rustled a single hair on his dirty blonde head.
"Don't bite," he warned, pausing for emphasis before pushing his fingers past your teeth once more. His tone was deliciously authoritive.
Or what? Is Nonviolent Neil gonna do anything about it? You sucked a few lengths more to make him comfortable before biting with force, grinning up at him.
A sharp blast of heat instantly bloomed on your right cheek, his open palm retreating. Holy fucking shit.
His slap brought your body to attention in a way you'd never felt before. A throbbing warmth spread where he connected. You felt his eyes on you, checking in for a moment without saying anything, waiting until you smiled—which you did—to plant a kiss on the stinging skin.
You felt his hesitation like another limb. He checked in with tentative fingers on your clit, so much gentler than before. His gaze kept skirting to your cheek, his mouth opening like he might apologize before ultimately looking away. The first attempt wouldn't be perfect, right? His first time making you the subject of impact play needed some reassurance, perhaps.
"Don't bite?" You took his wrist and glided his fingers along your tongue, right back to the moment. Angling your face more to the left so he had a fresh canvas, you made direct eye contact and bit down, hard.
This time when he slapped you, you laughed. It made your head buzzy, heightening the sensation of watching him take his shirt off; of watching him walk to his bedside table; of feeling the cool burst across your stomach as he pushed your lingerie up until it stretched and dripped massage oil on the small of your waist; of feeling his left hand collect your wrists and pin your hands above your head.
Neil's mouth twitched into a grin as his free hand annointed you with honey-rose oil. "Biggest smile you've had all week."
Best I've felt all week.
He finally did what you thought he would when he arrived. His curiosity snagged on the shiny red fabric, persuading him to grab a tail of the bow. His tug unfurled the fabric and bared your breasts.
The tension in your wrists exploded when he skimmed his hand up to your nipples. He swirled a firm hand until they pebbled under the oil heated by his scorching hand. Goosebumps erupted over every part of your body the oil hadn't touched.
Your fiancé knew you too well and was far too invested in welding a smile to your face. Flashes of times at the bar where he'd bet to leave the second you frowned, proceeded by employing ridiculous scenarios to make you blush and grin all night. Of course he'd go all-in on anything you asked. Why the hell hadn't you explored this dynamic yet?
He swirled his tongue around your nipple until you were sufficiently relaxed and could feel a breeze between your thighs; until you began to miss him inside of you, started to forget the pleasant ache where he'd slapped. He was calculated, waiting for your eyes to droop and body to calm before nipping, biting, twisting your nipple with his teeth.
Red-hot desire corded through you at the impact. Neil bruised hickeys onto your breasts as your back arched again, his spare hand following the roll of your torso to pull you flush against him.
"Hold still."
At the end of that command laid a promise, you knew it; you bit your lip and steeled your body not to shake as delight rippled through it. This was exactly what you meant in the kitchen, and fuck, fuck, the thought of seeing the marks on your body when he finished with you, god!
His teeth grazed your other nipple as he pressed your wrists further into the mattress, making you jump. A sharp—yet loving—bite made your legs lock around his hips, yanking him on top of you.
"They're so sore, please,"
"Don't be so dramatic," he teased.
He sucked harder than he ever had on your nipple and you shouted, your head thrown back into the pillow with a groan. Just when you thought he was done he blew hot, concentrated air against them. And what the hell were you supposed to do besides—
"Darling." Your hips wanted against his and he made a disapproving sound. "Don't be greedy."
At the edge of saccharine and scolding, his voice barely tethered you to the stakes.
Duality had always existed with you and Neil; he was aggravatingly arrogant and unmatchingly sweet, and where he was grating, he also charmed. A perfect storm breaking each time.
You kept quiet and still, willing yourself not to react when he caressed, licked and kissed up your jaw… Taking each opportunity to drink every inch of his skin, his sweat glossed your lips. His sedated tempo was entirely on purpose and it was precisely what you asked for. You relished it as much as it grated.
Unsurprisingly, one of the most difficult things to avoid was brattily shoving your wrists up, trying to wriggle them free. The weight of him pushing them back down made your mouth flood with saliva.
But if you waited… if you were patient, if you listened…
Neil had his fun kissing and stroking every inch of you but your vulva, but your lips, only ghosting his mouth along your collarbone, his nose grazing your neck but never lingering. He cooed for you to breathe when you held your breath to resist moving, resist tackling him and taking matters into your own hands. He only tickled your sides with feathery kisses to force a laugh, force some air, bring some levity.
"Impressive."
And he stepped back, unbuttoning his pants to show just how impressive you'd been. You didn't take the bait of how slowly he stripped, the trap he set for you to rip his clothes off. You wouldn't…
He just stood in front of you in his boxers, teasing the tip of his finger along the waistband like waving around a treat. He was waiting for you to get up. He wanted you to jump him.
You squeezed your legs together as you started to throb and stared him down, fighting not to give anything away. Like you weren't imagining the angles of his rock-hard cock filling you, like your mouth didn't water for it, like your fingers weren't quivering with kinetic energy.
When you smiled, weakly, he cocked an eyebrow and dragged his waistband up the inch he'd teased it. "If you're not interested, I can leave."
Please god, no.
"I'm following orders."
His smile slipped to show teeth. "Wonder what happens when you break them."
Oh, YES.
A dozen people couldn't hold you back. In the span of a second you launched from the bed and tore off his underwear—in the next you slammed his back into the mattress and climbed on top.
You kissed him until your mouth went numb, grinding your lips on the length of his cock that he wouldn't let inside you. Feverish hands, him and you both; he tangled his fingers in your hair, palmed your breasts, filled your mouth with his tongue and stunningly low moans.
There he was, unraveling.
You grabbed his shaft, positioning him at your entrance as you steadied against his shoulder. His tip just pressed into you and your mouth opened in a groan, anticipating his familiar angle, his depth, his languid strokes.
But of course, of course, of course…
Neil pushed you up by the hips and flipped you underneath him in one smooth motion.
… he wouldn't let that happen.
He lined himself up and you grabbed to pull him deep. His left hand locked around your wrists again, stretching across your body as he secured them above you. Neil sunk into you inch by inch until his hips were flush with yours, facilitating a beautiful stretch. He always filled you so delectably and you couldn't even tell him without it stopping.
Or…
He pressed his hips forward until there was nowhere left to go. It was almost too full when he stilled inside you, but not quite. Barely, barely not quite. You drank some courage from his kiss, then gave him a disappointed stare as if you felt nothing.
"Is that all? Hmm." You looked down at where your bodies met for good measure.
"Cute." He smirked, rolling his shoulders back as he settled into his hips. "Now try not to wake the neighbors."
You didn't have time to laugh at his audacity before he snapped into you and a moan belted out. Instinctively, you moved to cover your mouth as he thrusted relentlessly, hip to hip, your thighs already aching at the thud of his hips against them, but he had you pinned.
In, out, throwing backbreaking force into each thrust. The bedframe squeaked against the wall, the hung painting shivered, and unrelenting pleasure crashed through you. Each shot of his hips was more intoxicating than the last, his flushed face dripping sweat onto your stomach. It was delicious and awful and perfect and terrible that you couldn't grab him, couldn't mark up his pretty little back until he bled.
His moans were hard-won; usually impeccably vocal, noises easily lulled and tilted out of him. He wrestled them back, tightened his face, clenched his abs. A strained sound slipped out and your brows knit together as your eyes squeezed shut.
"Look at me while you take it, angel."
You forced your eyes open, digging your teeth into your bottom lip. He'd never called you that but it sounded so familiar. "Neil,"
He grabbed his pillow and stuffed it under your hips, shifting the angle in a way that centered your g-spot. You couldn't look anymore, resigned to the pleasure coursing through you as he built you closer to the edge.
Your wrists relaxed under his dominance, your core tense, ribboning throbs of desire from your cunt to your throat with each drive of his cock. The weight of his whole body channeled between your sticky thighs, adorning sodden sounds between involuntary moans.
Neil released your wrists and urgently cupped your face with both hands. "Look at me."
Your eyes flashed open to see his dilated blue eyes an inch away. His cologne consumed all thought.
"I need you to listen."
All you managed was a stuttered nod. He hadn't stopped fucking you, hadn't reduced his pace in the slightest, and the new angle tilted his hips forward in a way that whittled the world to him and you.
"If you look away once more it's over."
His rhythmic panting gave you something to hold onto but it wasn't enough.
"Neil, I'm trying," you whined, the pressure in your core beginning to coil. Your brows knit together and mouth opened, your breath spilling out in heaves. He mimicked your expression, sympathetic.
"I know, you're doing so well, love, come on," he egged, diving all the way in and out, exaggerating the sound of your wetness. His strong hands still held your face in place, tethering your focus to him. Your diamond ring spun as you grabbed at his arms, torso, shoulders, digging your nails in as you rolled your body with his thrusts.
"Grind on it just like that, gooood job, you feel heavenly… ah,"
His intensity was unbearable; your pussy fluttered around him, your breath shallowing. His name came out in a squeak and you were unable to look away. "Neil!"
"So close." His cock dragged in and out of you as the fluttering intensified. "You're just—about—to—"
He swallowed hard and pulled out right as you would have peaked, the emptiness making you shriek. "NEIL!"
Neil heaved beside you, and in your periphery you caught his cock pulsing like he'd almost finished. He hung his head as sweat dripped from it onto the wrinkled sheets. A creampie was never an issue, no, neither of you ever had an issue with that, and he'd been so… fucking… close, you could've came at the same second.
"That was fun, Y/n."
He slid off the bed while you navigated the whiplash, slipping his underwear on, then his pants. He threw a knee on the bed to adjust your lingerie, carefully retying the satin bow.
"Let me draw us a bath." The plane of his chest glistened and his fingers trembled fixing his button and belt. Frustration bubbled through you when he met your glare with a sly grin. "Come in whenever you're ready."
Oh. My. God. He winked and walked off, leaving you warring with a body unsatisfied and a spirit pleased. Half a mind to finish the job, you tugged open the bedside drawer to grab your vibrator when you knocked the book with your wrist.
You caught it and opened to the earmarked page he'd left it on, page 173. You choked back an exasperated laugh as you heard the words in his voice, felt the descriptions on your skin. No wonder it all felt so familiar. It was like he'd popped it from the pages and added flair.
Discarding the book, you rolled out of bed onto weak knees and followed the rush of the faucet and Neil's rolling hum. He helped you out of the set, kissing down your back as it fell onto the cool marble floor, then slipped your ring off for safekeeping. The jewelry catcher he'd bought in Milan, cheekily gifting it to you a month to the day before the proposal.
The steamy water was a balm, wisping the scent of eucalyptus into the air. You rolled the heel of your palm over your well-stretched thighs, sliding into the soaking tub until the water flirted with your collarbone. As he undressed, his half-hard cock flustered you enough to ask.
"Can we… finish things?"
"Well, that depends." Neil sank into the water with a roguish expression. "What happens in the next chapter?"
cw: 18+, smut-lite, very brief mentions of past suicidality/attempts
words: 11.6k
a/n: title based off the song ‘at last’ by etta james <3 sooo fitting, give it a listen! also: what a nice gif we’ve had… ;)
also! there's a good amount of conversations through text that shift with the POVs of each section. for reference, if it's the POV character texting, it'll be in bold. if it's the non-POV character, their texts will be in bold and italics.
"Like this?"
"Yes!"
He glanced up, worried. "Right here?"
"Exactly. You're stellar."
Bruce held the trainer EpiPen with a hand so steady he should've been a neurosurgeon. You'd instructed him to hold it in a fist, never putting his thumb over top, and he'd taken every word as law.
"This can go through clothing?"
You nodded, slightly confused. "You said you used epinephrine on yourself before."
"But doing it on someone else… on you, it's making me overthink."
Blue to the sky, orange to the outer thigh… Bruce slammed the orange plastic into the outer part of your leg, pushing and holding it for three seconds. When he pulled back, his eyes flashed as you shook your head.
"You have to rub the leg for like ten seconds after injecting."
"Right, sorry—"
He repeated the process, counted, removed, then counted again, rubbing heavy circles around the nonexistent needle mark.
"Then I get you to a hospital, right?"
He took it so seriously it nearly brought you to tears. While making breakfast he'd opened a drawer that hadn't opened in years; a trainer EpiPen sat front and center, and out of the corner of your eye you noticed him moving it from palm to palm, analyzing the instructions like dismantling a bomb. You flipped the hashbrowns and he moved to plate the sausage.
He set the trainer on the counter and asked if you two could practice before he left. Half an hour later, here you were on the edge of your bed.
"Yeah. When it wears off it can make the reaction come back." He capped the pen and set it beside you as you continued. "Bit different than using it to recover from injury."
You'd already expressed to him that if you were repeatedly exposed to an allergen, the reaction could worsen—it was unpredictable, which made him visibly nervous. He kept apologizing for getting it wrong, for asking so many questions, but all of it swaddled your heart in a bundle of the coziest yarn. What's the first sign? Then: How do I know if an antihistamine wouldn't be enough?
"A good tell," you eyed him curiously as you tidied up your room, the smallest ache in your leg from his practice. "Is if multiple organs are involved, like I'm vomiting and my lips are swollen. Or if I can't breathe at all."
There was no doubt he looked nervous, he felt it; it was absolute terror to imagine what might've happened if your body reacted slightly differently in Spring. "So you have a real EpiPen? Where do you store it?"
"I'm so bad at keeping track of it, it's awful."
He wrangled control of his breathing.
"It's somewhere in my—somewhere at your place now. I should have another one though because they give you two in case you need a double dose."
He stared at you, waiting to get more info. He was so precious.
"If after fifteen minutes I'm not getting better, you'd give another shot. But since you'd already fly me to a hospital by then, you don't need to worry about that."
Bruce became acutely aware you were two thousand miles from lifesaving medication. Why weren't you panicked?
"I think I kept the second one around here so I didn't have to travel with it." You picked up the trainer and walked to your desk to rummage around, wondering if it might've been stuffed in some drawer. Your old journal was the biggest limit to visibility, so you moved it, found nothing, and headed to the kitchen to widen your search.
Bruce ruminated over the anaphylaxis protocol until he was certain he wouldn't forget it. Sitting idly in your room had him getting up to fluff the flowers on your desk that had begun to have the slightest droop.
And the journal was enticing—as was the pen right there in the open top drawer…
Quickly, so you wouldn't be the wiser, he snatched the pen out, turned to the very last page to ensure he didn't read anything, and scribbled a note for you to find when you got to the end. He barely made it back to your bed before you came in, holding a real EpiPen out to him.
"Here. Take it so you have one."
"You need one with you," he asserted, wary of you being unprotected. "I'll find the one at the tower when I get back."
Anxiety leadened your ankles when you glanced at the time.
"Is your bag packed?"
Bruce kicked it at the floor of the foot of your bed, then knelt down to check. "Should be."
His attention snagged on a black garment at the far edge of your closet as you went to shut it. At his interest, you sighed and showed him the 'ridiculous thing' you'd forgotten to return to your ex-friend. It was half-blanket, half-poncho, somehow having a hood attached. He'd never seen something like it.
"There was a time I wore this like every day, but I haven't worn it in years."
You slipped it on to go fill Walter's bowl while he ensured nothing was missing from his duffel. He heard some commotion and walked into the hallway, startling when you rushed up from a dark corner. He made a joke about it being menacing, uncanny, and you laughed, promptly removing it and planting an apologetic kiss on his cheek.
Maybe he wasn't ready to go back to Gotham if his nerves were this fried.
A tube labeled 'Churu' was held out for Bruce. He ripped off the top and clenched his stomach when Walter dug his claws in place to keep his hand still, almost—but not quite—breaking skin. He'd never seen Walter stretch to this long, or act this desperate, hissing at him when he'd move his hand away to push the treat up. It was a stressful but memorable goodbye, barely managing to pet his head while zooming around the house for more.
He slung his duffel over the shoulder and eyed you under the thrown light from your living room lamp. His heartbeat felt sentient.
This morning while making breakfast, Bruce had been concerned about memorizing the feeling of being in your home. He focused on every minute detail as if the lenses would magically appear and record it, letting him feel right back here any time he pleased.
You led the way onto your porch, his chest cinching with each step.
"Make sure you bring the EpiPen with you on the flight. God forbid."
"You care so much, it's really sweet."
"You're making me worried about your dating experiences."
How they treated you, how they didn't. He still couldn't get past how the people you'd known all your life couldn't be assed to not have peach cobbler at an event you attended.
"Well they don't matter anymore, do they?"
He grinned. "No, they don't."
It was so normal now, you walking up and kissing him; despite this, he imagined he'd never quite get used to the sensation of your lips against his.
Your lashes fluttered as he pulled away. "Sure you don't want to come with me?"
It was a delightful concept, you knew, not having to say goodbye until you nestled into his bed that night and he went to his Batman duties—it held the potential of joining the mile-high club, too, but even that wasn't enough to sway you. You wanted some time here alone, while this house still felt like yours. A last night in your own bed.
"Tempting…" you toyed with the hem of his shirt. "But I want time here. I'll be on a flight tomorrow morning. Bright and early."
"We'll go straight to City Hall from the airport. Still work?"
"Sounds perfect, baby."
He held your gaze for a beat before hanging his head, blush creeping onto his cheeks. "I love when you call me that."
"Don't get all bashful now." You squeezed his hand, shooting to the night before and the pressure of the seat cushions on your knees as you straddled him.
A smile flickered on his lips. He clung to your hand like a lifeline, playing with your fingers, swaying your hands. "I don't want to leave."
You almost said then don't but he would've taken it seriously, and you didn't know what would be worse: if he outright denied it or outright accepted.
Considering the sheer concentration of love in his stare, you worried it would be the latter.
Clingy Bruce was a marvel and something you never dreamed existed. He leaned in to kiss you for the fifth time this morning—not like you were counting—and let this one linger.
When he slipped his tongue between your teeth you knew he was trying to make this last an hour and fuck you almost pretended not to notice his antics; the stalling he'd never admit to, his voice the tenor of honey as he swore he was just saying goodbye, and how you'd believe him.
But pulling out of his kiss made your chest ache, so before you could call him out you went right back in. He kissed like he wanted to drink you, his knees buckling.
"I love you so much," he murmured as he caught a breath, cupping your cheek with his palm.
If this is how he acts with only one night standing between us, how the hell is he gonna go out as Batman every night?
"So, so much," he continued, and your heart burst.
"You say it like I'm gonna forget it."
Whew, when he admired you like that he could split DNA. "Don't even want to take that chance."
Tonight was the first time he was yours under the whims of Gotham's nightlife. He said he never took a longer break, and his mind was so focused on you—what if he never came home? He'd never looked so alive, his presence never more tangible.
"I can tell, you know."
Bruce's voice was excruciatingly tender.
"When you're worried."
You flit your eyes up to his. While his face never used to twist into these tender lines, it was willful ignorance to say that gentleness hadn't always been there. In passing glances, moments where your mind left you, it had held you more than you'd been aware of it.
Him leaving here meant abandoning this week to memory. Like perfume on wet skin, you wanted to linger; let him twirl you around the living room, watch him melt under Walter's insistence, see him fit seamlessly in the kitchen with your parents. You wanted him here, but here wasn't quite forever anymore.
Forever was looking at you from a foot away on the porch, his hip resting delicately against the handrail. This being a place you were supposed to outgrow didn't make its imminence any easier. "It's strange not wanting to leave here."
Even with the Gazette offer, it wasn't that you wanted to stay in Washington—you'd never wanted to stay in this town—just that you didn't want to go there. Now when you glanced over his shoulder at the grassy fields, you thought of him and a creaky old house with rusted shutters.
More than anything you wanted him, and a secluded house in the middle of nowhere felt like the only way to keep him.
He watched your lips catch your teeth as reality poked at the bubble: he's bigger than this, he's bigger than us. He had ventures to go on, millions to serve.
You continued. "I just don't want this to be over."
He opened his mouth to start, but you knew that look. You didn't need reassurance right now, despite how lovely it was he rushed in to save you from drowning waters.
"Even if Gotham is perfect," you bridged the gap and rested your palm against his chest. Its gentle rise and fall was ridiculously soothing. "It's not this. This era feels so specific." Like a honeymoon. "We weren't even close to together when we got here."
His response made your knees weak. "We were closer than we thought."
A memory streaked past of him holding your hair while you vomited on the plane, how he wiped your face without so much as a passing wince. How you let him do so much—washing your hair, cooking you food, meeting your mom in a hospital room.
Trying to distract from your tears, you kissed him; you didn't want him to fret and see that look, because it would make it so much harder to be away from him. Diabolically needy, you'd even missed him when you excused yourself earlier to go to the bathroom.
Your efforts were in vain, since he immediately moved his mouth to smudge the tearstreaks away with gentle kisses.
"See you tomorrow." He kissed your forehead and rubbed your back, trying not to crumble when he heard you sniff. "You can call me any time."
"What about patrol?"
You'd asked this three times today and it cracked him open a little more each time; you could never be a burden, and "You could never interrupt me when you need me."
Every sentence exchanged tightened the knot in his stomach. He yearned to memorize every crumb of your neighborhood; each bend in every street, every windchime's frequency. He'd never felt aglow like this, and it washed all over your town.
"This is nice," he reminded, wrapping you in a hug. "We had a week away."
He worried what would happen once the tabloids hit an artery. How people would snuff out where you lived, try to interview your family, have some cousin of yours get a soundbite out of it for a second of fame. Rather than indulge those fears, he kissed the side of your face, placed his lips to your ear, and whispered words that came out easier and sappier each time.
"I'm completely in love with you. Leaving won't change that."
"We're like teenagers at curfew." You both laughed when you pulled away and your resolved sigh cooled his rosy skin. "I like it though, it's sweet."
Bruce's phone buzzed in his pocket, blaring the final alarm he'd set knowing it would take an eternity to tear himself away from you. How the hell was he supposed to get back to work when he had every resource to go anywhere you wanted in the world right now, for the rest of forever?
The exit burnt on his tongue. "See you tomorrow."
A final kiss that was so short, so assured. Dry eyes and a steady hug, the warmth of your bodies recognizing each other. He tripped his way down your steps and warmed up the car.
He looked at you through the passenger window as you waved. A peek in the rearview showed cloudless blue skies, and he let the moment fill him up until he could hardly breathe.
"Excited to be in Gotham with you." he shouted, rolling down the window.
"God, me too. So excited to move in."
His hand felt warmer on the steering wheel. "I love you."
"I love you more."
He paused to debate the ethics of getting into war with you over a 'more, more, most' competition while he was already running late. "Don't know if that's possible."
By the time he'd mostly backed out of your driveway you were at the edge of it, fully off the porch, waving goodbye in front of the car. He had half a mind to rush out to you…
The slip of the tires off the curb had him pull the e-brake and run out to you, drawing you into what he hoped was a bear hug, hoped was reassuring enough. You knew he would be late, he knew he'd be late, but he struggled to care under the weight of your lips and sound of your laugh by his ear.
You wondered if he'd ever make it home at this rate because why, god, why did he have to kiss like making love? Nipping at your lips until they were kiss-swollen, both leaning into each other so much it made your jaw ache. When he pulled away your body reacted as if struck.
That kiss evoked memories of last night, in the time just before dawn when it was still impossibly dark, of the ache in your hips as you twisted every which way across the seat, on his lap, kissing so deeply your teeth gnashed; until his fingers inside of you weren't enough but him pulling them out to open the condoms was too much distance and you fumbled with the box yourself as he pumped the full length of his fingers in the perfect come here motion, and jesus, how the windows fogged and smeared as you straddled him and found your balance, as he helped you get off while listening to his whines, the pitchiness of his whimpers as he met your hips in slow, forceful—
God, he was kissing you again.
"I think, um," breathless and dizzy, you gripped his hair and pulled him back in whenever he moved for air. "My parents, they should be gone for another hour..."
"Y/n,"
"I know,"
"I'm sorry." He broke away from your magnetized lips. "You wanted time alone. You deserve that."
I deserve… every nasty, romantic thing in the universe. It wasn't just about the sex, you needed to be as close to him as physically possible, consuming all of each other.
A car honked from down the street and he blocked half of the road. "Gotta go. I love you." He planted a kiss on your forehead and jogged to the driver's side. "Think of a movie for us to watch tomorrow—and don't forget your epinephrine for the flight."
You nodded, smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. "I won't. I love you too."
He navigated out of the driveway, then turned onto Camellia after a quick wave. You lingered there who knew how long, listening to the knocking wind chime and the soft scratch of Walter's claws on the screen door, before heading inside.
The photo wall, couch, and table were especially loud now that he'd left. Now that he was actually gone, this place felt timestamped, like a living scrapbook.
To bottle this feeling, you raced to your room, Walter trying to attack your foot on the way. You nabbed the journal you'd used since high school and hopped into bed. Walter curled up at the edge of it and rested his paw on the stuffed bat.
Flipping to the nearest clean page reminded that you hadn't used this journal since leaving two years ago. The last entry read:
I don't want to go to Gotham, but I don't want to stay here. Hopefully over there I can forget about it all. There's so many people and so many places that I have to get lost in it, right? I'll be living alone for the first time which I'm excited about. I have this studio close to campus, so close I can just walk to classes. Mom and Dad are pissed, as expected. Mom talked about blocking me from leaving, and Dad told me every horror story in the book. They think it's going to kill me to go there, not that it would LITERALLY kill me to stay, but they don't know that.
You abruptly turned the page, forgetting how rock bottom you'd been when you left.
Clean page. New start. You clicked the pen and wrote the date neatly in the corner, its nib holding a charge. What the hell to say first?
Hey.
Hey?
I graduated! I would say that I'm back here for good, but that isn't the case.
You felt physically hot.
I got a job at GU. A journalism job, which is a long story. Don't know if I still have it, but I guess I could be more freelance now if need be.
Why were you allowing yourself to sit on gold? You wrote the rest in a flow state, filling page after page until your wrist ached.
Needed an interview… Bruce Wayne… I hated him… finally got him to do one… Arkham… he was crying… saved me and Mar… panic attacks… movie nights… City Hall… Oz… 'kissed' in the conference room… so warm and seen around him… he visited Mom in the hospital… bracelets… Walter loves him… at the beach… Sue's… singing in the car… told me he loved me… had sex in a tent at that field I love… busted an air mattress… keeps telling me over and over that he loves me… moving in to Wayne Tower… could be permanent… nothing's ever felt so perfect.
The creak of the front door opening made you startle. You discarded the journal under your pillow and walked into the hallway.
"Bruce's car was gone, thought you'd for sure be with him!"
You gave her a confused look. "He said bye to you guys this morning."
"I know that." She waved you off and put the mail on the table. "I thought you'd drop him off."
"He has a rental car from the airport."
"So you're going back tomorrow?" Your dad chimed in while emptying a small bag of groceries into the fridge.
"Yep."
"For how long, sweetie?" Her brow raised like you were about to confess to leaving forever.
"I don't know."
Unlike with Bruce, honesty wasn't always the best policy with your parents. Despite how uncomfortable it was, you'd gotten good at lying for a reason; when you were honest about the perpetual flow state you existed in, they'd interrogate you into giving a hard answer.
"Are we talking a month? A year?"
"Mom, I don't know."
"Well, I hope you stay safe over there." Your dad finished with the groceries, crumpling the bag before Walter could suffocate himself with it. "Things didn't seem too bad in the part of town we were in, but you never know."
Hah. You wondered what their thoughts would be on this.
"Um," you crossed your legs at the ankles, leaning into the counter. "I'll be in a slightly different neighborhood, staying in Wayne Tower."
"Tower? Is that an apartment complex?"
You googled it for them. Hundreds of photos materialized of the soaringly high skyscraper, its windows perfectly polished and gleaming. As you expected, they were in various states of disbelief, pounding endless questions your way about the logistics, why it was his building, what Wayne Enterprises did, which left you excusing yourself lest you expose how little you knew about his public-facing career.
How many business meetings did he attend? When he wasn't with you, what made up his days? Did the public not see his business ventures for the simple fact that he never had to leave the building, and he did more than you or anyone else knew? Did he not want to leave because he knew you'd never get time together once he landed?
Crashing into your mattress had you staring up at the ceiling in a buzzy state of awe and motorized thought. Having every meal prepped by a butler? Did you had a maid now by extension? Without conscious awareness, you stumbled into the kind of life you'd always condemned. Would you ever touch a washer or dryer again? Ever fold your own laundry? Grocery shop?
Jesus Christ.
Maybe there was a middle ground? You could get used to someone doing the laundry and Alfred occasionally cooking. You couldn't imagine Bruce ate every single meal from Alfred's hands or that he never washed anything himself. Take the suit for instance—did Dory wash that?
… did Dory wash that?
You forced yourself to quell your worrying with a nap. Household delegations could be dealt with when you weren't 2400 miles away.
Bruce got on the flight with a mind caught between nerves and excitement. He was thankful jets had their own wifi, ordering a billion and one things for pickup across the city. Since his card was attached to Alfred's ledgers, he received a text from him not a few minutes after he paused.
Would you like me to retrieve your orders, Bruce?
It might make things quicker…
But no. He wanted to do things for you himself, like any normal boyfriend would.
After sending a quick I'll take care of it message, he settled in for the rest of the flight. Being away from you roused his body from its newfound sleepiness. The only thing keeping his system online was watching the flight tracker inch closer to Gotham.
He'd have to follow up with Gordon tonight, no doubt. Being gone for a week without his work cell was dangerous, but it'd happened, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. He mentally went through what he'd do when he got back, which pickup route was most efficient, and rolled some things over to the next morning, knowing your flight landed only half an hour before the fundraiser began.
He stretched his sore wrist and flexed his fingers; last night had been an unexpected treat on top of an already perfect evening.
The fog that steamed up the windows, the handprint you made on the back window as you grasped anywhere for grip; the static and euphoria in your kiss and every interlaced hand, every bump of his wrist or his hips into yours; the stiff backseat slamming the back of his thighs, delicious pain chording through him like a vine.
Bruce took a steep sip of water. The most lingering part of it was how his hands knew you. Settling instinctively into the fold of your waist, knowing just where to grip on your hips at first try. Knowing that if he did this, you'd do that; that if he did that, you'd make that sound. Familiarity made the memory delectably tangible.
He refocused on strategy for once you arrived: would you want to hit the ground running with the journalists case? If so, and if not, where did his boundaries lie? You didn't want to be kept and he didn't want to cage you. Where was the line of culpability if you wanted to be more hands-on?
Though he loathed it, his status was protective; though it sometimes unnerved him, he also knew that hands-on was who you were. The two could work in tandem; it would be easy to solidify the relationship publicly with neither of you putting on a farce. It could be fun, even. He'd never been one for PDA but he was everything he never thought he'd be when it came to you.
He texted with Alfred about Enterprises affairs, then turned his phone to silent and went to the bathroom. He didn't make it halfway down the cabin hallway before he rushed back and turned his phone on to full blast; if you called, he wanted to be available.
The rest of the flight was more of the same, wanting to text you but wanting to give you space; finalizing his route to all the stores, tweaking some orders via email correspondence, mentally landscaping the Tower.
It was as if time itself had stopped when he stepped onto the tarmac—his car sat undisturbed where he'd hastily parked it, even the weather held the same chill despite the storm passing.
Same tips, same handshakes, same roar of the engine. As he rolled through back streets toward his first stop, he was relieved that for a week, the city had breathed without him.
"So. Sweetie."
Your mom positively beamed from the other side of the couch, her idle hands absently continuing a crochet stitch you couldn't possibly name.
"Bruce is quite the smitten kitten."
You bit back a grin. Very cute and surprisingly apt.
She went on about how wonderful he was with everyone at the barbecue, how patient he was when you spoke, how he was just so helpful and intelligent.
"I know it's only been a coupla months, but I have a feeling about you two. Far as I can tell, he's a good one."
If she kept this up any longer you might explode. She'd never been so overjoyed about your love life. You had feelings about him too, and it was already hard for you to stave off clingy, grand fantasies of the future when you didn't have anyone feeding it.
"But what matters is how you feel."
She stared at you expectantly.
You wrung your hands and felt your body heat, avoiding her gaze. "I feel, um—really great about things."
"Don't be shy, hon. Have fun with it! What did you two get up to while he was here?"
You ran toward the first safe-for-work thing to pop in your head. "He took me to an arcade. Got me flowers, uh,"
"Thoughtful! Isn't that the first time someone's gotten you flowers?"
If she wasn't counting the time her and your dad bought you a bouquet after you got stood up at prom; how they casually left it on your bedside table like you wouldn't notice, like you'd think it from a secret admirer.
Everything had worked out with Bruce as well as it could, but there was a constant voice in your head screaming that any conversation with her might be your last. What if all you said was all she ever got to know about you and Bruce?
Shoving through self-consciousness, you divulged more. How you went to Sue's, how he paid off her fundraiser, feeding the seagull, camping and nothing else at the field you love. Driving around here and getting stuck in the mud in Gotham, going shopping for fancy outfits and going to bars. She listened like it was a fairytale.
"You light up with him." You embedded her sparkly eyes to memory. "I'm so happy for you, sweetheart."
The rest of the night was easy, calm.
Dinner with your parents, where the table felt notably empty to the point your dad had nearly readied a fourth plate. Passively watching a movie out in the living room purely to catalog the memory. Poring over old journal entries late into the night, teenage you dreaming about an unreachable partner and wondering what color eyes they might have, all the ways they might treat you, and wishing anyone would just listen and cure your loneliness.
Some of the entries were damning; looking at the scribbles, doodles, and hopes in front of you threatened everything you knew about fate. The air knocking out of you when you saw fantasies about blue eyes and someone who soaked up your presence like a sponge. Was there a space somewhere in your world that was always for him? Had your heart known him longer than you had?
If you weren't meant for this and he weren't meant for you, why was he scrawled all across these pages like a prophecy?
Naively, Bruce assumed that around-back store pickups would save him from the harassment of paps. Now that he had an entire carful of items and his eyes were practically bruised from all the flash, he worried if you'd seen any of the inevitable photos and the surprise would be spoiled.
It was a labor of love to bring it all up in a billion trips, that familiar ache in his right shoulder ripping through him as he set the final bag on the kitchen counter. His stomach twisted in knots. He jogged up to his room to slather on icy hot and pop an ibuprofen, stretching it out on his walk back.
The flood would always haunt him.
As he put it all away, he felt Alfred's presence like a trap waiting to catch. He didn't have time to talk while the flowers threatened to wilt and the ice cream melted on the countertop.
Bruce tucked a bouquet on the kitchen table, one in the entryway, one in the bedroom, and another in the theater room. He stocked the snack bar, strung up softer lighting, and suppressed every thought tugging him down to the cave until it reached unbearable heights.
Stepping into the cave left his eyes struggling to adjust. Dark, dingy, cold. It was glaringly apparent he worked alone, and as he powered on the computer to check the damages, he deliberated on ways to make the place hospitable.
As the screen whirred to life, he braced himself. How many times had Gordon shouted into the void? New serial killer? A mass shooting? Riddler or Joker escaped? A prominent social figure found dead?
Nothing but the occasional check-in from Gordon not seeing him for a few days.
Hm.
He fixed the brakes on the batmobile, then dinked around to make sure the car and suit were in workable shape. By this point, Bruce had stalled enough to begin leering at the suit, the tips of his fingers going cold as he fastened straps and attached velcro. Tugging the cowl on constricted his breathing and fell the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Had it always been this heavy?
Things chafed that hadn't before. The car was very loud, the streets moved too fast, were too narrow, too busy.
The first group of thugs was heavy work; he wasn't out of practice as much as he was in his head. What usually would've been an unintimidating weapon had his heartbeat fold on itself. As much as he hated when Alfred was right, occasionally he hit the money: you remained welded to every thought, and each weaponed criminal ripped anxiety through him. What if Bruce forced you to attend his wake?
He took a sharp inhale as he narrowly avoided a blade, popping the assailant in the jaw with a reinforced elbow. The group scattered as the subway paused at the station. It would get easier.
Trudging through the rest of the night proved this affliction was more impenetrable than he estimated. His skin had thinned, getting frustrated by Gordon's titular side-eye asking why he'd been gone, angry after he'd taken down a guy with a gun. It was aggravating to have his efficiency weakened, but he tried not to see it that way.
He tried, even when ducking shots half as fast as usual, his mind struggling to keep up.
He tried, even though his hands shook whenever he hopped in the batmobile to move sites.
He tried, until it reached a head with a cut that actually made it through the suit. A cut which required him to turn in immediately, only stalling down in the cave with the motor on, staring listlessly out at his desk wondering if this were just nerves, or his new normal.
Alfred received his text and made his way down, staying notably, and thankfully, silent. A strange disappointment bubbled in him, carbonating the anxiety and numbing him from the pain of the stitching.
Bruce didn't want to resent you for lowering his capacity; it wasn't your fault you filed down his edges. Wasn't it good he was more aware of his mortality? Couldn't he factor that into his risk assessments while in the field?
He could use it. Knowing the full weight of the consequences could make him more effective, more aptly gauging damage and priorities.
Barely beginning to put the kit away, Alfred scolded him as he pulled the suit over the sutures. "Bruce. You cannot go out like that."
He muttered something about it being a quick trip and put the car in gear. He needed one win to make his thoughts stop whirling.
Muggings were the next three stops. By the time he reached an armed robbery on the south side of the city, his brain began to tire and he settled into a groove, no longer feeling the fire of your tears on his cheeks whenever a weapon pointed at him.
When he reunited a child lost off the subway, when he interrupted a mugging at knife point and looked into the terrified, relieved eyes of the student, he knew he'd make both things work. There simply wasn't another option. It was far too easy to forget while in your orbit, but people needed help. Pangs of guilt skittered across his skin.
A particularly satisfying end to the night had him loosening his gloves before he'd even put the car in drive. For a brief moment, he'd gotten out of his head and fully into—out of?—his body. Moving with the current of a fight rather than taking forever to think about its direction.
He didn't know why it was so challenging to trust himself now; trust had gotten him you, and you were the best thing he ever had.
God, it was only night one—he shouldn't worry.
About twenty minutes before sunrise, you called Bruce.
"Goodmorning, baby. Up this early for the flight?"
Thank god he couldn't see your embarrassing grin.
Standing by the desk, you fiddled with the moonlit petals of the bouquet. You turned the volume up, pressing the phone tighter to your ear. "Hey. No, I just wanted to catch you as you were heading home. I'll go back to sleep soon."
His voice was slightly gravelly from fatigue. "You're right on time."
"Are you driving?"
"Mhm. About a mile away from the Tower. Do you have your pen packed?"
"Yes, it's in my carry on. How was your first night?"
"Not too bad. Gordon had some cases for me to look over but nothing urgent."
Perhaps due to you running on damn near two hours of sleep, your brain reminded you of the open investigation. "What about the case involving you? Any updates?"
"Nothing. Must've not found anything."
Yet, you didn't say. The last thing he needed was the entire world knowing he tried to kill himself, working themselves into a tizzy coming up with fake evidence and crime podcast content.
Bruce's life seemed an everlasting fountain for Gotham's schadenfreude.
"So you said you're almost back?"
"Just about. Why? Want to get to sleep?"
"No, just curious."
"You know," he let out a breathy laugh. "I used to hate that about you."
"''Used to' implies that you're in love with it now. Favorite thing about me."
The petals were velvety soft, gliding between your fingers like they were wet.
"One of my favorites."
Was it too self-indulgent to press him on that? Was that even a consideration when talking to your boyfriend?
Boyfriend. You looped an imaginary heart around the word.
"What's your favorite thing about me?"
With anyone else you might've started panicking when the line went silent. But you could imagine so vividly the crease between his brows, giving the question its full weight and respect.
"This might seem selfish,"
Mm, would it now?
"Or on the nose?"
Thinking out loud, how cute.
"But your sense of justice is very special. Even when I've struggled to comprehend it."
It meant a lot coming from him. You hoped he would see the compliment in your response.
"So you like that I'm like you?"
"Birds of a feather, I'm sure."
This conversation was so easy, casual, sweet.
"There were a lot of contenders," he continued. "I'll tell you more sometime."
A hard clunk tore you out of your reverie.
"But I just pulled in—the car phone will disconnect when I cut the engine. You should get some sleep."
If you could; hearing his voice made you excited all over again. It'd be divine to settle into his home, do some skincare in his mirror, wrap up in his shirts, get to eat all your favorite snacks without worrying about a grocery bill.
"I will if you take your own advice."
"Got to be awake for our movie."
"Or I'll just pick one with a bunch of jumpscares. Wake you right up."
"Horror for our first date here?" It made him laugh, which notched your spirits so bright you definitely wouldn't sleep any time soon.
"Those gallows, hmm?"
"So terrible," he teased, and you heard a seatbelt unclick.
"I love you." you said, desperately trying to bridge the mileage.
"I love you too."
So nice. You yawned and his care wrapped around you like a dryer-fresh blanket.
"Get a nap in, Y/n. City Hall might be standing-room only."
"Alright." you conceded, pressing the phone so hard to your ear your knuckles ached, squeezing every drop of affection through the mic. "I love you again."
"I love you again too. Good… morning?"
That was the first thing on your mind when you woke to your alarm; after clicking off the line, drunk off your own smiles, you blinked awake hours later to popcorn ceilings and warm sunrays. Early lightbeams sprinkled lovingly over the bouquet, illuminating the vivid pinks and oranges. Half a world away and Bruce still held you closer than anyone ever had.
You snuggled under the covers another minute, relishing in Walter's purrs and the relaxed thrum of your heartbeat.
Bruce got out of bed with a skip in his step.
After a quick snack, he hopped from room to room sprucing things up for your arrival. Yesterday's surprising revelation that there was less chaos than anticipated allowed him the space to take the night off, spend the first night with you in full.
Plans made and meat thawing for dinner that night, the theater room fluffed full of blankets, snacks, and pillows, his bedroom dresser cleared and closet halved, smoothing over fresh sheets Dory delivered hours before.
A pillow from the guest bedroom as a finishing touch. A lamp to your bedside table. A charger nestled in a nifty loop for accessibility. A lavender-tinted water bottle. It was shockingly fun to mess around with housewares. Made him feel normal. Part of society.
He thought of calling you practically every other minute to ask if you liked this color, or pillows like this or that, what type of lightbulbs were easy on your eyes, what scents you'd like around the house, what noise you wanted as ambiance, but he figured endless questions might destabilize you more than a couple misfit homegoods.
And on the other side of all this excitement buzzed a vulnerability he could only rid through neuroticism. Fixing rooms you'd never even look in. Aligning paintings that weren't crooked. Cleaning grout that wasn't dirty.
What he'd initially conceptualized as an extended sleepover now behaved like cracking apart his ribcage.
There was an intimacy to the Tower, a heavy but intangible thing he never wanted to dwell on. Accessoring it felt like laying flowers at a grave.
Bruce fell onto his bed for a shake of respite. His bedroom was less lonely than the rest of the house; at the age he was when they moved in, he was too old for bedtime stories so his parents had rarely come in there. Just a knock on the door as his father left for work, or his mother with talk of breakfast. It was the only room where the smoke didn't suffocate. It wasn't scary to think of you in here, as unnerved as he'd been in Spring.
His bedroom windows, always tightly shut with blackout curtains, faced the back corner of the tower. When it stormed rain, it was too dark for a drone or helicopter to see anything and when the sun did shine, its angle glinted off the glass rendering any camera unable to snag a photo.
He scooted from the middle of the mattress, training his body to take half the space amidst a rush of vertigo. His phone buzzed.
About to leave for the airport! So excited :)
The tension in his chest loosened.
Got the place ready.
Mostly.
Looking forward to settling in with you.
Me too! How long do you think we'll have after the fundraiser before you have to get to work?
He grinned, anticipating your excitement.
I'm staying in tonight.
You reacted with exclamation points.
Really?! You don't have to do that. Might be jetlagged anyway.
Want to spend this first night here with you.
Seven different heart emojis were sent his way alongside an explosion of confetti.
Ttys! Can't text in the car, you feel everything in that truck and I don't wanna be carsick for the flight.
Drive safe. Text me when you're about to board.
You knocked the dust from his thoughts; he finished organizing his room without a chorus of anxiety ruling every decision. He worried if he'd been too assumptive that you'd want to sleep in the same bed; if the Tower was enough like your home now or if it were still too cold; the shadow was heavy over the door, but he kept moving anyway.
Alfred shuffled around him when Bruce grabbed some lunch. What did he think about the flowers? The full cupboards? The dust clinging to the air from rummaging in rooms forgotten to time?
He bit into a tangy apple and jogged up the stairs.
Your phone was dense in your palm. While your dad warmed up the truck, commenting through the screen door about how smoothly it ran after Bruce's help, you dwelled in the entryway, chancing nervous glances toward the hall.
"Mom?"
"Yes hon?"
"When's the next shot? Next Friday?"
She walked into the living room with Walter in her arms, hunkering down into the recliner.
"Nope. Next one's October 18th."
Shit. It'd been long enough to switch to monthly?
"Okay. I'll stop by so I can go."
"Honey, I don't want you worried about me. Settle into things with him over there."
"It's fine. I want to come back, I want to see everyone. I want to keep the routine."
She eyed you warily, but without fight. "Okie-doke. I know your dad likes to get lost at the airport, so you'd better head out."
As antsy as you were to leave, it also felt like a betrayal. What if less frequent injections caused her tumors to grow and you spent the last few months of her life holed up in Wayne Tower?
There was no way to know, which meant there was no way to know—the canyon of uncertainty caused a chronic freeze response. If you only have a couple dollars, you spend them differently. Leaving meant that on some level, you were either convinced things would be okay or that you'd be fine being away if they weren't. Neither one appealed to you.
Her casual approach to mortality was as grounding as it was terrifying. If she were inconsolable, you were fairly certain you'd be running around like a chicken with its head cut off or consumed by guilt at spending time away.
I should feel more guilty about leaving.
And I do.
But Gotham sparkled just as it had two years ago, promising novelty and connection and space to breathe. Was it naive to believe in the same lie all over again? That the distance did anything but stretch the rubber band farther?
Leaving made it seem like nothing of note occured. If you were a better daughter, wouldn't you be staying nearby, not letting your dad work on the car and the yard all by himself? Wouldn't you drop your superfluous priorities, run out and start weeding the garden so they didn't have to, empty the dishwasher before you left, clean up the kitchen, get groceries, go to every single appointment with her so she'd have an advocate?
You bid her goodbye with a massive hug, digging your teeth into your tongue when you felt how thin she was. Scritching Walter's chin was the only way to make your stalling inconspicuous.
There was only so long that she'd be alive, only so long that she'd be an option—so why the hell were you choosing anything else? Why'd you run around with Bruce Wayne while your mom was in the hospital and fresh out of it? Why'd you let yourself get so enchanted by someone that would still be here in ten years? Or… someone that might not even matter in ten years.
She would always matter more, yet how were you showing her that?
An egg lodged itself in your throat. "I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with you this week. I got distracted with Bruce—"
She shook her head so fast you worried it might bobble off. "Don't worry about that. Have fun."
"You're fun," you challenged, and she tsk-d as she grabbed your hand.
Her skin was soft in that worn, affectionate way only a parent's was. "Worrying won't change anything, honey."
She sure did love to say that.
"Don't let me keep you waiting." Your mom squeezed your hand and waited for you to let go. "Go be in love."
Boarding!
Bruce had changed his ringtone so that when he got a text or call from you, he could easily distinguish it from the rest. Conditioning himself to associate his useless phone with delight.
Hi love. Fly safe.
I still have service while we're on the ground, boarding could take forever.
That was true. He certainly didn't want you thinking—
Unless you're trying to get rid of me ;)
The prospect of inviting you to live at the Tower indefinitely while desperately wanting to be rid of you was comical.
Never!
Don't say that or I'll take it as a challenge.
Conversing with you was like lounging on a cloud.
How do you like to spend flights?
You took a few minutes to respond, the typing button popping up and back down again. He hated waiting on people but, as if you weren't an exception to everything, he actually enjoyed waiting on you.
Sorry, had to board wayyy sooner than I thought.
But I like to listen to music. Got a pair of headphones with me.
No movies?
Nah. Feels weird to have everyone watching it with me.
Good point.
And books make me carsick. Planesick, I guess.
Lol.
You laugh-reacted to that and he couldn't believe he was full-on wide tooth grinning at his phone.
Actually, I think my group was the last to board. They're starting the instructions for if the plane kaputs.
Fuck, he didn't want to think about that.
Wait, they didn't give that message on the private plane. Is it just assumed those don't crash? Despite all those tragedies?
Never flown commercial.
He smirked as he watched a text pop up instantaneously.
You're literally joking. Never?!???!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Not once.
Okay, the flight seems to be getting ready for takeoff, I could lose service any minute. Don't want my last words to be gasping at how rich and sheltered you are.
Sorry, that was meant to be sarcastic. I will be safely landing in a few hours!!
Counting on it. I love you.
I love you too.
❤️
❤️❤️
❤️❤️❤️
I love you so much!
I love you always.
You must have taken off because you didn't reply. Resuming his duties, he zigzagged up and down the stairs to finish last-touches. Some dusty areas he took care of with a wet rag, and he fumbled through a few storage closets for a broom before plunking himself on the top stair to reorient.
"Is Miss Y/n's residence permanent?"
Alfred leaned against the newel post at the bottom of the staircase. Bruce had all the lights on in here for once, peeking around for any dirt, dust, or god forbid mold, so it was hard to see his face as his eyes struggled to adjust.
Permanent made it sound like you'd spend the rest of your days here. "Semi."
He felt his walls build again, like spirals of ivy armor.
"We're together now."
He could see the old man's face slightly better, but if his vision was accurate Alfred's face didn't change. Bruce didn't know what he expected, but it certainly wasn't nothing.
"Ah."
A long beat of silence. You were right, the halls were much too quiet.
That was what he forgot! Something to fill the halls! Would he have time to get another order before your flight landed? Maybe he could go to a store near the airport, stash it under the seat?
"I see you're bringing some color back to these halls."
Bruce's voice softened. "Yeah."
Alfred glanced around the foyer while clicking his cane against the ground—a thing he did when there was something he wanted to say but was hesitant to.
"You seem happier, Bruce."
I mean… he'd never laughed as much as he had the past week. His jaw had never ached from smiling. His muscles never felt so relaxed. His thoughts had never been so concentrated on the future.
Tears smarted Bruce's lashline but he blinked them back. He knew Alfred cared but it was impenetrably difficult to go toward it. Always had been.
"I am." He grit his teeth and tensed his stomach, a pathological avoidance creeping in. "Very happy."
He forced his jaw to slack, allowed his mouth to curl into the ghost of a smile. He had no doubt Alfred would see his happiness when you walked through those doors, but he didn't want talking about you to feel strained. He hated this stiffness that plagued the both of them, but hadn't a clue how to escape it.
"Washington was… fun. The beaches there, they're uh, they're cold. Her parents are nice. Nice town. Different. Sunnier. Slower. She, um,"
Speaking shouldn't feel like being flayed alive, especially not about this.
"The camping trip my parents were going to take, she recreated it. It was all…" His throat dried. "Very meaningful. Perfect."
He hoped that was enough. That was more than he'd ever willingly indulged the man in one sitting.
"Well!" Alfred's cane snapped brightly against the ground, and Bruce heard the excitement he fought to bury. "How wonderful. I'm happy for you."
The silence that followed was comfortable, kind of—he couldn't decide if it held a charge. He stalled a minute before going to check out Dory's storage closet in the back. He hadn't made it halfway down the hall before Alfred called out to him.
"You know, Bruce. When you invite someone into your life, it needs to be taken seriously."
He ignored the defensiveness that flamed up his spine; what decision hadn't been followed by Alfred's scolding? Naively, he'd thought as he aged that he might let up; if anything it had only grown more persistent.
"Going out as you have been might not be best. The schedule, the risk."
"We've talked about it. She understands."
Simple, straightforward, didn't start any arguments.
"Yes, but you might find the reality is quite different."
Words about not abandoning his mission nor you were shoved back. By the way he spoke of it, it was as though Alfred thought he'd shoved you into a trap. He didn't want to feel nauseous today; he didn't need his worries stirred. Today was about you and him.
Bruce effectively distracted by grabbing a broom at the back of Dory's closet and got to work on the upper levels, in case you ever wandered up there any nights he was away.
He set a spare pillow on the upper level's chaise lounge, softening the velvet with an upholstery brush. A window nestled above it that faced the south edge of town, memories scattering of evenings tucked into a book in this corner of the house that blocked the noise. There were always colleagues of his father over for meetings, dinners—
Shit.
He pocketed the brush and jogged down to the kitchen, taking a right towards the most veiled part of the house. A door opened into the foyer, he remembered too late—the butler's entrance nudged open.
Thankful his teeth hadn't split from grinding, he stumbled inside the hosting room. The walnut table had ornate carvings on its sides, centered below a silver chandelier. Bruce's gaze settled at the head of the table, startling as the top of the chair brushed his waist. It used to be at his eyeline.
Things that required upkeep had, surprisingly, been tended to. Adhesives weren't nearly as degraded as they should be, the leather had been oiled, the varnish on the table kept so the wood didn't crack. The carpet vacuumed, the drawers opening cleanly. If he didn't know any better, this room could've been used last week. It didn't smell of mildew or stale air. The room expected to be used. He'd forgotten it existed.
He hurried away from its implication, his pulse thundering.
Bruce grabbed the last bag from the kitchen and flew to the bedroom, uncapping the fresh candle and letting the scent of Noble Fir exonerate him. Rain, pine, firewood; the heady amber of flushed skin.
His fifteen-minute warning alarm sounded alongside a knock on the door.
"Your psychiatrist needs to meet with you."
Bruce cast a sidelong glance as he snagged his keys from his bedside. "I'll call him after, she's landing soon."
Alfred shook his head. "I'm told it's urgent. I'll chauffeur from the airport."
A change in med dosage? A recall? Wanted to ensure he was mentally prepared for another political event? Had they uncovered something about his attempt, needing to warn him before it went public?
He sent a text he knew wouldn't deliver until you landed and left a note in the center of the mattress. Taking so long he felt Alfred's impatience from a floor away, he didn't have time to think up an outfit—he reached for that same old wool overcoat and closest plain suit, fussing with the tie in one hand while stowing the EpiPen in his breast pocket.
One last sweep of the house, rushing between floors at a speed that strained his suit. Eager steps carried him to the garage and sweaty palms gripped the steering wheel as he pulled out of Wayne Tower.
Gotham air reached the bottom of his lungs for the first time in twenty years.
For the first time heading toward Gotham, you didn't feel otherworldly dread. Playlists looped tales of romance that spun your veins gold. Your favorite love songs read like a personal soundtrack, inducing playback of memories, not fantasies.
Every cloud fluff begged to be cataloged; every ray of light dancing off the window stuffed you with sunshine. Did people just feel like this? Was this what life felt like when you were exactly where you were supposed to be?
Bruce. You traced a B on the leg of your sweats. When you thought no one could peek, you admired the photo of you two on the beach. Who would've thought those eyes could crinkle?
While getting on the plane brought no fanfare, getting off was a different ordeal; you ducked into a restroom to change for the event and by the time you emerged, flashing lights blurred the path to the exit. How had Bruce's eyes adjusted?
You trudged your way to the pickup area and struggled to look for Bruce's car amidst the black spots in your vision. His car was nowhere.
Questions boomed behind you, too jumbled to pick out more than the odd phrase. Politics, relationships, Bruce Wayne. It seemed they wanted you to answer for the great mysteries of the universe.
"Miss Y/n?"
A crisply-ironed arm reached out to you and you looped yourself around it, following Alfred to the backseat. Within seconds he slid in the driver's seat and put the car in drive, barely allowing time for you to buckle. No nonsense.
Who you assumed were paparazzi followed you in assorted vehicles, their brights turned on despite it being broad daylight. It hadn't been this bad before. The intensity, the invasiveness.
Against the better judgment of your blooming headache, you checked if Bruce had texted.
And of course he had.
Hey. Have a meeting with Crane, but it shouldn't take long. Logistical stuff, I assume. Should be able to make the fundraiser but I'll be a few minutes late; Alfred will be waiting to pick you up at the airport. Hope your flight was enjoyable.
Leave it to him to be one of the few people on earth to do a semicolon in a text.
Sounds good babe. Excited to see you!!!!
You leaned your head against the window and stared at the passersby on the sidewalk, considering how you hadn't walked against the brick in weeks, how much that would save your clothing, and what that meant going forward. The fine line between you and them began to blur for the first time.
Despite Alfred parking as close as physically possible to the front steps, the walk was long. Cameras on cameras, shouts and stage direction they expected adherence to. At the airport you wondered if Bruce had just shielded you from most of it, but no; you were certain it'd never been this dire, having to push through shoulders to reach City Hall doors. Paparazzi had become downright monstrous in the span of a week.
Rai caught your eye at the catering and you went toward him like an oasis. Another first was having to smile off conversation starters as you walked through the foyer.
"You're here!"
"I'm so glad you're catering, oh my god."
Black curls framed his brown eyes, all the frizz gelled out of them. He handed you the bubbliest champagne you'd ever seen like you were back across the counter. City Hall never felt so familiar.
"Reports said you and Wayne jetted off to some foreign land. Video of you two dancing at some bar."
He winked at you as you took a sip.
Did the video go viral? Is that why everyone's circling like sharks?
"Something like that."
Gossiping with Rai between patrons passed the time flawlessly. Apparently business had been booming at his store and more than the occasional person talked to him about Lincoln March. They loved him.
Rai snuck a drink out of the dregs of a champagne bottle while you stood just in front of him to block. About a fifth of the foyer was filled now, Mr. March and his team setting up onstage.
It wasn't lost on you how the elite guests gave him no more than utilitarian attention, like it was a hassle to interact with someone outside of their circle.
"Is that normal?" you whispered, not bothering to conceal your distaste. "Them barely acknowledging you?"
"I prefer it," Rai rolled his eyes, discarding an empty bottle of Dom Pérignon. He spoke only after a careful glance around the rapidly filling room. "You think I want to talk to 'em?"
Thank god he still felt comfortable talking to you like this—he didn't see you as one of them yet.
He stooped to grab a bottle of Cook's. Your brow furrowed. "Ran out already? But that one was so good."
"Coordinator said to switch at five, that it's too pricey."
To spend on the poors, you filled in, surveying the room overwhelmingly populated with working-class people. "Bruce is paying for this, right? The catering? His money's going toward that in the budget?"
Rai's eyes flashed when you used his first name. "Yes, the Wayne Foundation funds this."
"Use the expensive stuff. Bruce can foot it."
You downed the rest of your glass and nodded him goodbye, wandering to the middle of the crowd as March's voice boomed over the loudspeaker. Except…
Taking stock of your environment, you realized that when Bruce showed up in a few minutes, he wouldn't be able to find you here.
Scooting to the side closest to the door didn't help either; with this much crowd, even if you stood directly in front of it, you'd be funneled deeper in just a few minute's time. You resigned yourself to keeping your head on a swivel.
Groups you'd never seen poured through the double doors: construction workers wearing muddy boots with wear lines, parents with little kids coming in on their day off from school. March was connecting.
This fundraiser read more like a community gathering than anything else. There were a few tubs for donations at the front, a volunteer from his team with a card reader smiling at the edge of the stage, but like the money was an afterthought rather than expectation.
His promises were all too easy to get lost in; in case you got bored and wanted to rile up the conservatives in the city, you hit RECORD on your phone. March's talking points were so idealistic it almost read fantastical. It was incredible, but Gotham giving paid leave to parents? Gotham having universal childcare? Gotham creating an outreach program for the houseless, Gotham decriminalizing drugs and focusing on rehabilitation? Gotham having the highest taxes on the wealthy of any region in the U.S.?
If Bruce were here to hear all this, you hoped it might persuade him to endorse. This guy was a damn lightning strike.
Lincoln March talked to the crowd like they were friends, neighbors, loved ones. He fielded questions outside of appointed times and kept the focus on the most vulnerable. He was harsh on his fellow candidates but didn't live there. Refreshing to have a leader with a vision so clear, so dedicated to helping the city.
He was that last Christmas light that wouldn't go out in a whole dead string.
Five-minute intermission came swiftly, with March shouting out Rai's and promptly weaving toward the restroom. You followed close behind, waiting for him to reemerge with impatience exaggerated by strangers doing their best to catch your eye.
Right at the four minute mark he slipped out.
"Mr. March."
He spun on his heel and clapped his hands together. "Ah! Excuse me, aren't you the journalist who did the interview with Bruce Wayne?"
Not The Girlfriend, huh? Does he not know or is he just being respectful?
"I am. Y/n. Nice to meet you."
His handshake was more casual than you'd felt in these rooms; his equally disarming smile spurred one out of you. "Pleasure's mine. Anything you were looking for?"
"There's a lot of turnout so I'm sure your message is getting heard, but I have some follow-up questions that might be better answered in an interview format."
It was a struggle not to laugh at the irony of politely requesting an interview in this hallway.
"You're with the Gazette?"
"I am, yes." Tentatively.
"GU cleared this?"
"If they won't publish there, I'll do so independently."
March took a second to figure something. "I'll accept if you publish independently."
Huh? "Well that's not figured yet, unfortunately."
"I know that puts you in quite the position, but independent press needs to be fiercely protected. Nothing beats integrity."
"I agree," you followed, slipping between groups of people trying to say hello to either of you. "But are you speaking on integrity of journalism or the ability to manipulate your answers with a private press?"
March laughed like you'd made a joke between friends. "Reach out any time if you're able to meet my stipulations. If not, no hard feelings."
He pressed on, folding through the crowd like parting the red sea. You tucked into the back corner to avoid being in people's eyeline.
You chewed on your cheek as March resumed, appreciative of the recorder in your pocket memorizing everything impossible to listen to against a storm of thought.
Independent press—it wasn't something you hadn't considered, but where would you host it? Start a newspaper for one? Create a blog? If you went that route, what if you were ousted from weekly meetings and had to ride your boyfriend's coattails? Would your pen have less weight without the Gazette's reputation preceding it? With Bruce's in its place?
Although the interaction was pleasant, it left you churning with questions the latter half of the event. What underdog didn't want all possible coverage? In a city like this, anything that got your name out was worth it. If you went independent, would that revoke your insider status and make the journalism students more at risk? Did you need to work within the system to make it better?
"Once again, thank you all for taking the time out of your day for the future of Gotham."
You snapped out of it. Where the hell was Bruce?
He'd left no texts. You sent a follow up.
Almost over. Everything okay?
The second you hit SEND, a ruckus erupted outside. Breaking from the herd, you poked your head toward the entrance.
Bruce ascended the stairs, absolutely annihilated with mics and enormous cameras. Outside of the blast radius, it was easier to parse their questions in full. Where had he gone last week? Was he serious about his girlfriend? Would he make it a habit to be absent for election coverage because it reminded him of his parents? Reminded him of the flooding? Reminded him of every single bad thing he had ever experienced?
No wonder he never went out.
But god, his beauty was a shame to hide—you swore he had a halo. Dark brows, dark hair, cheeks blushed from the chill, wearing that same outfit of his. Had he worn it as an homage to the beginning?
He scooted through a narrow opening, twisting backwards in his haste to escape the cameras. He'd barely taken a full breath indoors when he peeked over his shoulder and met your eye with a subtle double take; after the brief distance, it'd never been clearer that he was the very air you breathed.
You recognized the tension in him immediately. The divot between his brows, regarding you without a smile but not a frown. Poor guy was concerned. Cautious.
Back to the hustle of Gotham, at last.
Oh, Bruce. Violins laced your internal monologue. Always so worried.
Bruce Wayne is submissive; his name is synonymous with devotion.
he exists in perpetual servitude. he is constantly attuned to the pulse of the city, extending himself for its wants, needs, and desires. he possesses and wields power and authority, but those are more inherent to his social status and out of necessity rather than want.
Bruce Wayne is selfless, both inside and outside of the bedroom. that is not to say he receives no personal enjoyment or fulfillment through what he does, rather it shifts the focus of how he receives it.
to be dominant, he would have a more internal sense of fulfillment—that is, throwing enough punches and seeing things from his own lens would be enough to please him. instead, he constantly checks if he is doing enough, if Gotham is better and happier. it matters less to him if he is personally proud of what he did that night, it matters his impact on others.
Bruce Wayne’s satisfaction is intrinsically tied to his partner’s. he is pleased by their pleasure, not solely from his own. he will twist himself into any shape they desire so they can get what they need. his locus of pleasure exists outside of himself.
you will never find Bruce ‘taking’ something for himself for that purpose alone; he does not take on the role of Batman, or even the public persona of Bruce, because of personal gain. he simply fills the role that Gotham and his partners need. it is an act firmly rooted in attentive, selfless servitude.
a top or bottom is a physical position, but a dom or sub is psychological; he is submissive. he does what he does primarily for the greater good, letting Gotham and his partners guide and lead his work.
And I still see some of yall say ‘make this fic into a character ai pls!’
WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER
Get off those god forsaken generative ai apps or you will go down with those who care
Especially those of you in the fanfic community, you steal your own work by going on c.ai and simultaneously kill us
For those who don’t know, ai takes from fresh water to cool its computer systems and the water can’t be recycled. ChatGPT alone uses 500 million gallons of water a day, and the AI industry used more water last year than the plastic water bottle industry. It also produces nothing original and takes from artists and writers alike.
Please resist and fight against this, it will only change if there is a collective effort ‼️‼️‼️
a/n: this is all Bruce’s pov <3 this chapter is sooo fluffy, oh my god. shoutout to the title song. i’m pushing the bruce wayne loverboyism agenda!!!
Bruce’s thumb skirted the ragged edge of a peeling menu, listening to the rolling ambience of a half-tuned guitar while he decided between kettle chips or pickle spears.
“I’m definitely getting the chips,” you swooned, staring dreamily at a bag of them behind the bar.
“Willing to share?”
“Absolutely not.” After swatting him with the menu, you gestured toward his wallet. “Get your own bag, billy.”
Sally, Billy. Your names were fun. He grinned as he rested his menu atop yours. “In awe of your mind.”
“Don’t get too comfortable.”
“Genuinely!” Bruce clarified, twisting toward you on a stool he swore was about to break. “I mean it. Very creative.”
Your eyes twinkled when they met his, sending a flare through his chest. He was glad you both ended up here, a place with the lights slightly brighter, so he was able to really see you. It hadn’t been five minutes of sitting down and his cheeks already ached from smiling.
“Gonna pee real quick, order for me.”
He drew a long breath when you tucked out of sight, surprisingly grateful the club hadn’t worked out.
“And if I’m recognized?” he’d asked as the car pulled in, hoping he didn’t sound as worried as he was. You unbuckled at the same time and leaned to plant a kiss on his cheek. He felt himself instantly blush.
“If it gets uncomfortable and the place turns into a meet and greet, we’ll leave.” You shrugged like his reputation couldn’t possibly put a damper on the normal evening. “Otherwise, I’m okay. I knew what I was getting into dating you.”
There were plenty back roads to get lost in if needing a quick getaway, so he wasn’t worried about that—right then, he’d been fairly certain he was projecting his nerves about dancing.
Even when you’d been inebriated at the 44 Below, you were good at it; you moved fluidly with the music, singing in tune and on beat whenever you knew the lyrics, not a care in the world. He suddenly lost all coordination the second a song began, and despite Oz keeping the playlists slightly dated, he hadn’t even known any of those lyrics apart from the odd song.
He’d turned quickly from that thought, bile shooting to the back of his throat.
The first hurdle of the night came when he’d removed his sunglasses and handed over extremely damning identification to the bouncer. You got cleared and stood a foot in front of him, a million-watt smile dressing your face. He braced himself for a billion cameras.
The man had taken a good, long look at his ID, flipping it front to back and flicking the hard plastic as if it might crumble. He recalled the chatter of people filing into line behind him and a countdown began to when the night would shatter. If he ruined this for you…
With the bouncer still inspecting, it gave him time to absorb more of the ambience. The sidewalk was dotted with moss, there were peeling bricks making up this black and red building, and the strong pulse of bass pushed out from the windowless door. The air was fresh and earthy despite it being a big city, and it was easy to understand why looking at the trees lining each street.
You furrowed your brow at the man, opening your mouth like you might say something, but he spoke.
“You’re really the Bruce Wayne?”
Cue a smattering of photos and a group of people desperate for autographs. He hadn’t anticipated the general public wanting your attention so badly, but he should have. Being away from his reputation for a week had nearly made him forget his own celebrity.
And if he were being honest, he preferred that shift in the public toward you; it was dramatically nicer to be smiled at than to navigate hatred.
Between autographs and hasty selfies, he'd examined you. The affairs of unsought fame didn’t drain you like it did him. Your zealous energy made it pleasant for him to endure, too. After the crowd was decently satisfied, you'd left the sword in his hands whether to stay or go someplace else. Though he said it was fine, you’d told him: “You deserve more than fine.”
He’d assured you it was alright to push through, so you both ended up in a packed club so booming and lively he could’ve sworn this was Gotham if he closed his eyes.
The dark was obscuring, towing him out of self-consciousness, but it made him struggle to see you. The glimpses he did get when a light beam would flit in your direction showed you enjoying yourself, helping carry him through each song.
You’d told him on the drive how your old friend group never invited you dancing and how that left you woefully unprepared for Gotham’s club scene. Apparently Mar—who he was banking on making a better impression on soon—preferred to go out in groups; you didn't explain anything further, but he could glean how out of your element that must have put you.
So, he danced. Hip to hip, chest to chest, moving in fluid motion that made his body looser than at the Iceberg—but not without your coaching.
“Shoulders relaxed,” you’d said, gently, firm hands pressing down like a weighted blanket. Fingers snaked around his waist, instructing to move from his hips, hands running up and down his chest until he couldn't think of anything else but you.
Sweaty hands holding equally sweaty ones, pulling each other into and out of salty kisses. Ripples of pink and purple light bedazzled your skin, rushing a billion endorphins to his system.
The best part of being your boyfriend was getting to completely, unabashedly soak you up—watch your smile without fear of being questioned; watch the swish of your hips and turn of your waist; stare for ages into your eyes, feel your warm skin, and not hide an inch of how happy it all made him.
It had just gotten to a remix of a song you screamed ‘oh my god!’ about, and you were halfway into the word ‘love’ when the lights flickered and a horde of people surrounded. You grabbed Bruce and tugged him out the back exit, both of you high off adrenaline and skimmed with sweat.
Prior to jumping in the car, he analyzed your buoyancy like a ticking clock, recognizing a similar feeling as the first date: crushing pressure.
He slipped into the driver's seat, berating himself for not opening the passenger once again. Putting the car in gear, his shoulders slumped. “I want this to be nice."
“Nice?” You challenged, and he breathed a little too hard out of his nose.
“Perfect,” he admitted, hyperaware he sounded like a broken record.
You’d cupped his cheek, your palms cold from the night chill. “Fuck it all. It'll be perfect because I’m with you.”
The whole drive here he’d heard Alfred’s voice on loop, sporting well-meaning jokes and concerned comments about his ‘perfectionism’. You’d gotten busy surveying the scenery out the window, giving him ample time to psychoanalyze himself.
With Batman, he could reset the next night if he didn’t measure up. However, one could only fuck things up with a person so many times before they resented you. The thought made his shiver reach bone.
Now you were both here, in a dive bar with no more than twenty patrons. They turned their heads when he arrived, but no one’s stare lingered. The lights were even, low but enough, aside from the glimmer of a disco ball in the corner. No pyrotechnics. No organ-eviserating bass. Nothing overstimulating.
He could relax here. If he was able to trust your reassurance, that was.
A redheaded bartender named Pat came to take his order, a pair of black reading glasses tucked into her shirt pocket. Noting the ‘CA$H ONLY’ sticky note on the register, he wandered to the ATM in the corner of the bar to withdraw.
Black screen. He pressed a button on the keypad to wake it, and it roused—but the button felt encased. Sticky. Hollow. No light between the keys, but could be an older machine…
Bruce tugged at the plastic, and it lifted clean off. Disgusting.
He walked over to Pat, who shot him a bewildered look and set down the glass she was cleaning. “Did you break my ATM?”
“This is a skimmer,” Bruce explained, setting the contraption on the countertop. “It didn’t feel quite right when I punched the keypad.”
“Oh my lord,” Pat exclaimed, her mouth dropping wide. “Hold on, let me—Charles?” She leaned over the counter, a middle-aged man looking over from the far end of the bar.
“Yeah Pat?”
“Guy said he found a skimmer. Right on my machine.”
Bruce was usually good at recognizing off-duty or undercover cops, but his vigilance was dulled around you. ‘Charles’ wandered up and grabbed the thing, face scrunched. “Pieces of crap taking good folk’s money. I’ll take this down to the station. Need your security tape too, P, but that’ll be later.”
He saw a flash of your hair across the bar.
She thanked Bruce, saying his orders were ‘on the house’, and promptly announced to the patrons to contact their bank if they used the ATM at any time recently.
Suspicion tingled; had she known about this? Had she placed it? But you emerged, and two cherry colas and waters were lined up at the seats when you sidled up, his spirit settling with the bump of your shoulders as you picked out a table.
Batman could stay in Gotham.
"What's this about security footage?"
"Found a card skimmer."
“I leave you alone for one minute and you stop a crime.”
He half-smiled. “They almost hit the jackpot.”
“Imagine. Thank you!”
Pat set down the food and hurried off to another guest.
“How does it feel to be in here with your shades off?”
Oh shit. He hadn’t meant to leave them in the vehicle. “Uh—good! Forgot they weren’t on.”
You crunched on some chips, staring pleasantly at him. The booth felt tighter than the one at Sue’s, or maybe it had been the soothing ocean waves that hadn't let him notice it. Gritty sounds shouted from dilapidated speakers. Was it the voice coil? Did the coil go through the dust cap? Deteriorated foam, perhaps? The bass was half-busted, only coming from the right side of the back bar. It was turned up a bit too loud for the building’s capacity and general atmosphere.
You ate a particularly large chip, its crunch reorienting him.
“So,” he began, his arm cooling against the table’s edge.
“So?”
“What’s your ideal last night?”
“Makes it sound like I’m on death row. Has being gone from Gotham this long given you the heebiejeebies?”
Yes, he almost admitted. He yawned and stretched toward perpetual vacation, the constant exposure to calmness recalibrating his nerves. Staying here forever sounds shockingly appealing.
“It's relaxing here. Unusually normal.” His heart raced thinking so, and he huffed out a breath.
“You focus on that a lot. Normal.”
“You do too.” He reminded, and you looked caught.
“I’m sorry I said that about you. But in my defense,”
“I’m not normal, mhm.” He teased, taking a chomp of pickle. You waited for him to finish chewing before he finished, his face going warm under your attention. “I agree! That’s why it annoyed me when you kept saying it.”
You brightened. “I could tell, which is why I kept doing it.”
Both of you enjoyed your respective drinks and sat in gentle silence until a divot appeared between your brows.
“I think you always clicked with me." Beads of water ran to your knuckles as your fingers traveled the slippery glass. "I was desperate to get under your skin despite saying I didn’t give a shit about you.”
You both grinned.
“In fact, Mar talked about us dating a few months back and I literally fake vomited.”
He couldn't say he was surprised; how deep into the night had he stayed up during the spring storm, skin crawling, ruminating on how you were only a floor away? Fantasizing about wielding the power of Zeus, snapping his fingers and the flood would quell and he could rush you on your way. “Tell me more. Lovely date talk.”
“I kept thinking about you during the summer. It wasn’t as often, but you were just always there.”
“A malignant presence.”
“Pretty much.”
Soft laughter again. Usually full of indented scribbles, his brain was a notebook full of pleasantly empty pages.
"When I realized my feeling were deeper,"
“Hmm?” Amused, you sat straighter, locking into eye contact.
“Did you know I went to therapy over it?”
“No!”
“Absolutely did. Had a panic attack. Ended up on the clinic floor counting sheep.”
“I love that you,” your eyes flicked up to his and he knew precisely what you were mentioning, “were scared of me. The power I had.”
And still have, he almost said.
You slammed the last of your water like a shot, your smile widening.
“I had a sex dream about you the first time you came over. When I was high? Well, it was a kissing dream, but it felt so fucking real. I was losing my mind in the bathroom over it. Saying mantras over and over that did jack shit.”
“Terrifying prospect, kissing me.”
“Absolutely nightmarish, I know. God, we both acted like we were headed to the gallows. Hilarious.”
“Now we’re here.”
You peeked at each other, saying "In the gallows," at the same time.
“Some nice gallows.” he murmured, slipping his hand into yours between plates and glasses. "Have I told you I love you?”
You cocked your head. "Maybe you should say it again to make sure.”
So upsetting how much distance a single table could make. Briefly considering hopping up and sidling beside you on your bench, he settled for bringing your wrist to his lips for a kiss. “I love you.”
He watched your shoulders sink just slightly. Were you tense? He could give you a massage later, or sleep out on the couch tonight at your parent's house. Give you room to stretch on the mattress.
“I love you too. Think we’re the cheesiest couple at this bar.”
“Good.” He couldn't take the distance anymore, leaning over the table to kiss the grin at the side of your mouth. Your smile only widened.
“Okay pickle breath. To answer your question,"
Bruce bit his tongue as he leaned back into his seat, fighting off giving you another kiss.
"I don’t know what I’d like to do tonight. I feel like we’ve done so much already, just in general.”
You sighed and put your chin in your hand, gazing at him happily.
“You’ve seen more of me than pretty much anyone. I can't imagine what you don't already know, it's bizarre."
That happiness was shortlived however, as your eyes glazed over and you started worrying your lip. Was there something you wanted to say that you were worried he wouldn't like? Should he preempt, say that whatever was on your mind was perfectly alright?
"What are you thinking about?" He reigned in his urgency, his voice warm.
“Just trying to make sense of why it feels like this.”
Like this: floaty-grounded, excited-soothed, sleepy-wired. Comfortable. Peaceful.
“Do we have to make sense of it?”
That smile was back; he always felt it before he saw it, his heart fluttering like a parade of butterflies.
“Did I just hear you, Bruce, say to not analyze something? When has that happened?”
“You’re the only exception.”
He very nearly prattled on about how sometimes making sense of feelings wasn't helpful; he'd tried to do that with you for so long, and it'd only gotten him so far when the feelings remained immovable. There came a point when the mystery was part of the fun. Wondering when such knowledge would be gathered as: what niche bands were you into? What foods did you detest? What embarrassing scenarios haunted you? What did you do in the middle of the night when you woke up and couldn't get back to sleep?
“Lucky me.” You took his hand and squeezed it. “Am I an exception to your aversion to dancing, or are we going to sit at these old booths all night?”
"I danced!"
"Whenever I drag you to the floor."
Bruce glanced over your shoulder to the section reserved for dancing. A few old couples populated it, plus one that looked middle age, and besides them reigned a smattering of singles, all elderly. The musician had slogged off for another drink; he could tell the man would be too wasted to go up for another song. A patron switched the radio on to a poppy station, turning it up and tuning until it stopped crackling.
Hm. Not a mechanical problem, then. Faulty cable? Connector?
Bruce shot his attention to you, then took your hand and guided you down to the shadowy edge of the bar floor.
A rush of insecurity covered him in white heat, dressing his skin in goosebumps he hoped weren’t visible. To be so exposed went against every cell in his body, anticipating a camera flash or fifty, or schmoozers to interrupt. All without glasses and facade. The sole tether was your enthusiasm.
He cracked a smile when the song switched to something modern. Even electronic beats and looping production didn’t have the old couples miss a beat. Maybe he did need to get out more—he saw one of them mouthing the lyrics while he knew none.
How do you do it? You’ve got me losing every breath.
The bridge began to build and you pulled him flush to your torso. He leaned to your ear, his breath hot. “What did you give me to make me do this?”
To have his hips in sync with yours, to have the room present but fallen away at the same time, to have his feet stepping on beat, his shoulders loose like he were lounging in bed, his fingers never missing a twine with yours.
You didn’t answer, but the panels of the disco ball danced silvery mischief into your eyes.
The song faded from one to the next, then another. More of your colors pulled forward. Bright smiles, various mini shouts and encouragements, moving feet until the soles of his shoes kissed every inch of the bar floor.
Bruce’s gaze hadn’t stayed in one place that wasn’t your eyes until they latched onto a woman at the wall recording him with a cell. He took you by the waist and began guiding you away, running on instinct.
You stalled and he whispered, “Cameras.”
Fluttery lashes enamored his breath away. “Let them. You’re allowed to live.”
Your hands slipped to rest on his shoulders.
“But they’ll—”
“Know where I live? That’s why I brought us a state over.” Your hips matched his, nudging him closer to the synth beat. “We’d better get used to it.”
Hesitant but well aware this was par the course with you two now, he built himself into the moment again, step by step, twirl to caress. When the climax of the song came and you acted no different to how you were before the camera, he let himself swim in it.
“We’re so okay.” you heartened, and his breathing deepened. Just focusing on your eyes, your smile, the heat and pressure of your body reassuring him on every beat.
Time slipped like sand through fingers. When you finally pulled him toward the table, and breathless from his first true workout in a week, he tugged your arm for one last dance. "Please?"
And when you looked at him the same way he looked at you after such pleas, every cracked part of him smoothed over. If he'd known love would feel like this?
He guided your body around his this time, letting you spin him until vertigo crept in and his euphoria bubbled over in winded laughs. He tripped over the top of his shoe, nearly catapulting across the floor until you caught him with a stagger.
"Unconvinced you didn't trip on purpose."
Your smile stickered to his memory. Like it wasn't already branded there.
“Can’t believe you caught me.”
A quick smooch to his cheek. “Since you're a baby deer."
Both righted, he slipped his fingers to intertwine with yours and began to sway. "I do know how to dance, Y/n."
You glimmered at him. "Take fancy classes?"
"They were thrilling. Exactly what every nine year old wants to do after school."
Jesus, making you laugh was his life's purpose.
"So if this were a ballroom, you'd be in your element?" You wrapped your arms around his neck, nuzzling his chin. "Hands go here?"
"If you're going to prom." His jaw ached from the slope of his smile, pinching deep facial nerves that'd never been acknowledged.
"Like you'd know about prom, D.J."
That narrowly-tuned guitar sounded from the corner stage, the stage's width no larger than a few plastic crates. The man was back with a laissez-faire mentality, strums coming more from a fantasy than what would actually sound decent.
"How do you dance then? Formally?"
"I'll have to take you to a gala."
Ooh, that made you brighten.
"Do they even have those anymore? With a dance floor, big gowns, and a violin quartet?"
"Not the quartet."
Your nose scrunched in response, playful.
Above your shoulder, Bruce snagged on the guitarist struggling to tune his rosewood Glarry. God, that'd be a monster to tune…
"You wanna get up there?"
He bit the inside of his lip, wishing he could tune out badly-tuned guitars.
"You said you play."
"Uh," he chanced another look at the man, now with a face so scrunched from fiddling he was sure to bust a vein. "I do, but—"
Not unsimilar to that fateful day four months ago, he felt a push in the small of his back; this time an encouragement followed.
Gliding as best he could off of adrenaline, Bruce walked the perimeter of the floor toward the stage. The stooled man, with peppery long brown hair, cursed under his breath on approach.
"Damn fuckin' thing… knew I shoulda never gave it to that bastard."
His cord was tangled in a muddly pile by his feet. If he were being honest, it was a tripping hazard, and those stool legs looked incredibly unstable as it was. Half the directional lights on the stage had burnt out and the others were in varying stages of 'about to die'. It brought a haze to his vision.
"Want any help?”
"Sure man, my hands are all fucked today."
He strummed it to see how he needed to adjust, and you cheered from below. The man laughed, pointing at you and talking about having a fan. He turned the E, tuning by ear being deceptively easy with how thoroughly off the guitar was.
"What's your name, huh?"
"Bruce." He moved to the A, which was more or less tuned. Interesting.
He played a few notes to check, which made you holler at him again. This time with an accompanying whistle.
"You hot, Bruce? These ol' lights are janky."
Could his skin be at least a shade darker so his blush would be less transparent?
D. That one only needed small tweaks.
You shouted once more when he checked. He barely withheld a laugh. If you didn't slow up, he'd start to think about taking the stool for himself.
He snorted. Yeah right.
The G was sharp, the B flat, the e somehow exactly right. How he'd—or whoever the stranger loaned it to—had managed to screw it up so badly, he wasn't sure. Like a bunch of pigeons took to it.
"Thanks a lot. Shit, I was worried I'd have to turn in early."
Bruce nodded and hopped off the stage, running sweaty palms through damp hair. Even outside the suit he sweat like he'd just catapulted into a pool.
Standing at the edge of the table, you motioned with your finger for him to come. The distance between you moved like a current, stretching and collapsing on itself with every step.
He really could breathe here. How many people would be hounding him if this were Gotham? Where could he ever be in that city where someone wouldn't know his name and everything they thought came with it?
You both downed water like you’d just been in the desert and plunked into opposite sites of the bench.
"Gotta say I'm disappointed. Thought you'd finally show me one of your Nirvana covers."
"Didn't want to steal his shine."
"I'm sure." Playing with a paper straw, tearing at it until the seam split. You wrapped it around your pinky and chuckled. "I liked it when you wore that ring to City Hall."
He might've been surprised you remembered if he hadn't remembered everything about you. Every outfit, every trace of makeup on your skin and every way you did your hair. Every word. He tried not to focus on that too much, cataloging you; sometimes he hated his tendency to download every crumb of information, feeling more of an encyclopedia than a human.
“I never thought I’d be here.”
He swished the dregs of ice across his tongue, foregoing his mind's feeble attempt at rumination. “This dive?”
You laughed a little, and he’d never been anywhere as much as he was there right then. Your chin rested in your palm, your eyes dewy and glittering. “Here with you.”
It seemed strange to him, because you hated him when you first met. You took a sigh that had a hint of despair and he leaned forward just enough. When your gaze lifted, it was guarded. You regarded him like he might’ve been an apparition, then wiped at your eyes with a low laugh. The music dulled.
You sat like that for what felt like minutes, your gaze shifting focus slowly from your hands, with their slight rumble, to the blackened night beyond the foggy bar window.
Between worried and curious thoughts about what was flying through your mind, he found occasional seconds of pause. A foreign thing, when he'd spent so much of his life avoiding standing still.
You were sweet. And mean. And smart. And funny. You saw through him as if he were made of glass. And maybe he was, for you. You pulled him out of himself and the cage he kept himself in.
Maybe he only thought he was alright before because he’d never known this. In fact, he was so sure of it that he erased all hesitance from his tone with the squeeze of your hand. He knew it was because he’d never known this.
His gaze draped across the cracking pleather benching and the wear curves on the wooden tabletop. Glided just over your shoulder to the bar a few yards back, with a faded and crumpled liquor license that was two months overdue.
Each time your eyes floated to his, the thinking stopped. Motors compelled to silence, clearing space for whatever you had. You took his hand and squeezed once more, filling him with ridiculously cataclysmic emotion, and you simply said, “I just love you.”
As if the moment hadn’t just pulled at the seams of heaven, you went back to crunching on your chips.
“What would happen if you did this in Gotham? Went to a random bar, ordered some food?”
He certainly wouldn’t have left drinks and food unattended, that was sure. That, and not needing to lock up the bikes a few days ago had him thinking: what else had been a culture shock for you about Gotham?
“Trying to see what our life will look like?”
Your eyes widened a little when he said our. "A little.”
He crunched on a pickle with a deceptively sharp crunch. “Didn’t go out often, so I don’t have much data. General public didn’t pay much attention to me until the Dior shoot and graduation.”
“Didn’t people come up to you like they did at the club before those though? The paparazzi went wild every City Hall meeting.”
“Papparazzi care. The public… they approached sometimes. Less excitement though. More like a sighting.”
He cringed; being treated like an otherworldly being was bizarre, but the alternative was also ridiculous. Getting touched incessantly now, the way hands would graze his ass or crotch more often than was at all subtle.
“How so?”
Bruce sighed. Chomped into another pickle, his thoughts growing listless.
“Wanting an autograph, but only for archiving. A photo to prove I exist. Making up stories because someone ‘thought’ they saw or heard something.”
Your face was concerned. A tad worried. A tad teasing. When your features softened toward humor, he felt his shoulders drop. “Gotham’s Sasquatch.”
The pickle was delicious, and conversations of how he’d been treated before helped him out of the haze of the moment. Even if the music was grating here, even if he felt like a fish out of water without a disguise, he could just be. “Precisely.”
No flashing cameras and demanding touches. Soft lullabalic you.
“Which do you prefer for the public? Then or now?”
“I’m not sure.” He raised his voice as the patron at the makeshift stage turned up his guitar, setting his elbows on the table to scoot forward. You did the same. “Before, I was this inhuman thing… now people are too familiar.”
You fluttered your lashes when he said that, piquing his interest.
“That’s part of the reason I almost didn't recommend a club tonight,” you admitted, chewing on your lip. Your eyes widened. "Not that you need to feel bad! I just know people already act really comfortable with you in broad daylight, and I figured a pitch-black dance floor would only exacerbate that. People trying to get away with shit."
He could still feel the warmth of your palm against his at the 44, and instinctively grinned, floating toward more complex memories. “The public did get a little touchy at Oz’s club.”
“I wouldn’t remember.” You put your chin in your hands and blew a huff of air. It moved some of the hair dangling around his eyes. “That whole night is a blur, including rewatching. And now we’re here.”
“Can’t believe it hasn’t been a week.”
You were extremely focused, your brows scrunching. “Jeez.”
He knew that look by now. The look that let him know you were drifting into the ocean.
"What about truth or dare?"
Whew, the life preserver worked.
Like clockwork, you whipped out your phone and pulled up a tab that seemed suspiciously at the ready. After he teased you, you shushed him and cleared your throat for the first question. "Truth or dare?"
"Truth."
Knowing you, you'd probably banish the dare that actually popped up and make him go onstage to play the world's shittiest cover of Mexican Seafood.
"What’s something you haven’t told anyone?”
Bruce was certain there were things he hadn't told anyone, but they weren't consequential. Nothing he felt like wouldn't bring down the mood (why would anyone need to know how he managed to get himself to sleep the weeks immediately following their deaths, let alone on a last night in your hometown?) or wouldn't be utterly pointless (he stole a pencil from his teacher's desk in grade school and never owned up to it).
What the hell didn't you know?
You grew excited when he paused, landing on a sufficient answer. "What?"
He hushed, glancing nervously. "We’re in public.”
“Ooh, so it’s risqué?” You leaned forward balancing your head in your hands. "Tell me."
“Top secret information.” He leaned closer too, teasing. The joy in your eyes and the curiosity living in your held breath had him dragging it out as long as he could. "I…"
It would've been easy to sit and admire you all evening, but that wouldn't make for a very interactive date. Just as he was about to persuade you onto the floor once more with promises of telling, he chanced a lucky look out the window and spotted the glint of a professional camera lens. Phone recordings from patrons were one thing, but vultures were another.
Your head swiveled to match his, and you accepted his bid to rush out the back exit.
Amidst the rough swish of gravel beneath both feet, you called out about the tab. He reassured via half-shout, half-whispers that it'd been taken care of. Your laughter lingered on his skin.
Piling into the car was a heady rush of knocked shoulders and jammed seatbelts. He peeled out, hightailing it down a side street until he jetted through tree-lined streets and dizzy streetlights. You celebrated when he took a hill a little too fast, and a look in his periphery showed a wide-toothed smile pinching your cheeks.
A window down, the radio up; crisp air launching in a spiral between you, the speaker's bass thumping against his ribs. The wind caught your perfume and his lungs filled with helium.
“What was the secret?”
He laughed; it wasn't even that funny, just sweet how eager you were, but rather it was easy for humor to spill out of him. More than it'd ever been. “The question wasn’t about a secret. Just something I haven’t told anyone.”
You nudged him with your elbow. “Fine. What is it then?”
“Don’t even know if I can say it. It’s intense.”
“What?!” Your curious shriek made this tease so much more fun.
“If you must know, when I was growing up, I collected…”
"Yeah?"
Wiiide eyes, chewing on your lip as you leaned in, impossibly invested in what he might share. You couldn't be as in love with him as he was with you, could you? It almost looked like it. In fact it—it did.
He used the rush that brought him to his advantage; anxiously running his hands through his hair again, exhaling a considerable breath like he couldn't bear what he was about to speak. Took everything in him not to break when you rubbed his arm, telling him it was okay.
He glanced at you with a knitted brow, a breathy confession. "Pokémon cards."
“Bruce!” You swatted his arm, collapsing back into your seat. “Did you really?”
“I’m not the liar here.”
He put on his blinker and immediately pulled to the side of the road.
"I didn't mean—I didn't mean it to come out that way, it sounded funnier in my head."
Supremely gracious, you didn't appear to have issue. "I know what you meant. I love you, stop worrying."
“I love you too.”
A car zoomed past too close for comfort. He cleared his throat. “I also have no clue where I’m going.”
“I’ll direct."
He pulled onto the main road. He couldn't say shit like that about the lie. You'd stressed over it, for god's sake. Sobbed over it. Had barely accepted his reassurances that things were okay now because it ran so deep. It wasn't something he could throw around.
Ugh, it really wasn't. Were you biting it down, making yourself more palatable since this was the last night here for a while? Wanting things to roll smoothly in the transition from here to regular operations? At the cost of speaking up?
"Take uhh, the next left.”
He did, though he almost missed it. 'Don't get too comfortable' thumped between his ears. He couldn't. He was too relaxed.
Your palm flattened on his thigh, and he felt pressure in his knuckles. He loosened his grip around the wheel. Unclenched his jaw. Listened to your voice gently telling him, once again, for the second time tonight, that all was well. In spite of his clinical anxiety, you were divinely convincing.
Brighter than the surrounding area was a lookout at the far side of a roundabout. The city sparkled from afar, light dripping from leaves and ferns. Softly illuminated was a white stone bench, which you guided him to.
However, you instead sat in the cool grass and used the bench for simple back support. He followed suit, which made you promptly shift positions and settle your head into his lap, looking up. Something in him bloomed; he was continually astonished this well of love ran deeper, tunneled further by the most normal of things…
He played with your hair, curling his fingers around flyaways, smoothing the baby hairs at your hairline with the pads of his fingers. Despite the city being so near, the moon was insistent on being close to you. Lighting the slope of your cheekbones, the hollows of your eyes, and accenting the curve of your lips. He grazed everywhere the light touched with the back of his hand.
Eventually you tempted the silence—gently, hardly even a whisper. "Pokémon, huh? I would've pegged you as more of a Yu-Gi-Oh! kid."
You sipped a water he'd entirely forgotten you brought.
“Did you ever play anyone with all those cards?”
“Never had anyone to play with. Plus, half of them were rare. In sleeves. Wouldn’t want to disrupt storage."
“You’re telling me somewhere in that tower is a stack of rare pokémon cards from the nerdiest kid alive?”
“The rarest ones, actually.” He plucked the water bottle from your hand and took a drink as payment for the tease. “Holographic Charizard. Shadowless first edition. Mint.” He instinctively made the finger sign for perfect. Suddenly the wind was chillier on his face. “Don’t get me started.”
“Please do.” You played with the hem on his shirt sleeve, positively beaming. “Is that your favorite card?”
He shook his head. “I like my illustrator card better. Only thirty-nine were produced.”
“That few?”
“Mhm. Think it was the only time I leveraged my name to buy something.”
“Do you have a favorite Pokémon?”
Verging on self-consciousness, he held back a side-eye. He hadn't thought about this in over a decade, the air beginning to spark.
“Partial to water types.”
“Not fire? My read on you is all wrong tonight.”
It made sense; he had mentioned—god, why was he talking about this? He felt his body cringe. Who talked about this in their thirties? “Too aggressive.”
“It’s a fighting game, Batman.”
But it was flooding back to him; every opinion he'd kept to himself about the hobby, too resigned to the status quo to bother Alfred about a card game and too socially isolated to talk to anyone else in a meaningful capacity. “On the other hand, leaf Pokémon?”
He blew out a huff of air, unable to suppress a roll of his eyes.
You startled in his lap like he'd just said something heinous. “You’re joking! They’re so underrated!”
“They get as much love as they deserve, besides a game or two.”
"Didn’t you play the gameboy games? What about Bulbasaur?”
“It depends on the game." Were you genuinely interested in this? "Who picks Bulbasaur as a starter across the board?”
“I didn’t say across the board.” Shifting in his lap, your hands went from freely at your sides to clenched around your torso, a hard line between your brows again. God it was fun to see you worked up about this. “Now, psychic and rock Pokémon—no, normal Pokémon, they’re properly rated.”
“Psychic Pokémon are not properly rated. Normal Pokémon make up the majority of the game, so,”
“Because Ratatta can’t be assed to not harass you.”
He capped the water. “Let me guess, you like bug pokemon.”
“I don’t, actually. I think they’re just fine.” Your expression tilted toward a glower. “But I’m feeling defensive of them because I can tell you don’t like them.”
“I like them. Beedrill is a wonderful asset. Scizor? Yeah.” He rolled his shoulders back, a billion opinions swarming. “You know, people get so defensive of fire pokemon. They focus so much on the flashiness of the flames that they forget they need to build up their team.”
“So it’s user error, not a character flaw.”
First of all, you both needed to get on the same side before going further. Otherwise you two were arguing apples and oranges. “Which game did you primarily play?”
“I don’t know, the one with Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander… it had a red cartridge.”
“Was it called red or fire red?"
“Fire red!”
“Who did you choose?”
“Charmander.”
Yeah, no wonder you were shilling for grass and fire Pokémon.
“Alright. I’m actually very surprised you chose Charmander—especially after defending Bulbasaur, which is one of the few games it’s a star in—but: with fire types, what happens if you go up against rock types? Water types? You drive your emphasis on evolving Charmander, only to see the first two gyms are exactly your kryptonite.”
"Is that right?"
“Technically, if you evolved it to a level thirteen you could utilize Metal Claw, but realistically you’d have to have a Mankey on your team.”
“What type is Mankey?” You settled back into his lap, your eyes getting that lifted, twinkly look. It almost distracted him out of thought.
“Fighting type. All I’m saying is, people underestimate the first pick and go off of who looks most aggressive. Especially with the messaging on the box, the fact it’s called fire red, it has Charizard, yeah."
“Wouldn’t it do good with the later gyms? I remember those being easy."
You weren't wrong, and it wasn't even your fault that you were fighting so hard on this.
“Sure, but you have to play long enough to get there. Video game completion rates top out at around thirty-percent; so when you factor that in, having all this branding favoring a particular starter only to have it screw you over in the initial challenges? They needed better marketing. Skewed the whole game from launch, rigged it from the very beginning.”
"Only thirty percent?"
"Top out there, absolutely. I don't know why they'd market it like that."
“I thought you said you collected cards, not that you were a walking encyclopedia of the franchise.”
Bruce laughed to himself, the air rushing from his nose making you blink. “I played the early games, not the later ones.”
“What got you into it?”
“I went to a private school growing up, after my parents died.”
Ah shit; so much for not bringing down the mood.
“Right after, the press was riled up; so for a couple of years I went to a boarding school. At orientation they talked about a Pokémon club, so I bought the games, got some card decks. Played them through in the weeks leading up to leaving. Was never interested before, but it ended up being fun.
"But when I got there for the first day—it was the reason why I couldn’t stay there for the rest of secondary.” The memory made his jaw tight all these years later. Why'd grief have to cling to him like a parasite? Why'd it still bother him so much? “The members would ‘duck and cover’ whenever I came into the room.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry, that’s super fucked up.”
He thought about your 'friends' and let his self-flagellations slip through the sieve. Of course it still bothered him.
“Yeah so, I never got to play. Stopped going. I started collecting more of the cards as I got older, just a way to pass the time until the tabloids died down. There are endless forums to get lost in.” The crucial part he left out was and when there's nothing else to do, trapped up in a tower. “Came back to Gotham and it got lost under it all. Shocked I remember so much.”
“You light up talking about it.”
And was it boring you? Shouldn't there be more 'adult' things to discuss? He opened his mouth to shift the subject—to what he had absolutely no idea—but you interjected.
“What would my Pokémon be?”
“Espeon.” It fell out of him before he'd consciously registered the question.
The full brightness of your phone accosted the dark. “I only played like three of the games, so… I am not as knowledgeable, unfortunately."
He stared out at the horizon to give you privacy, feeling notably silly doing so. The city was considerably smaller than Gotham, none of its buildings as high or limits as sprawling. Hills and mountains studded the distance beyond, and with the trees at the edge of the lookout it seemed a city between two jungles.
It really did make sense why you felt so lost in Gotham. He hadn't known towns could be this small, cities could be so green; something deep in him balked at his comparisons, loyal to his city limits, but he couldn't help himself. This week had been fucking clarifying when it came to all sides of you.
“I’ll give you two. Batman is Zubat, of course.”
He snorted.
“Bruce is, you are… and I’m so annoyed you said Espeon because you’re absolutely Umbreon. Through and through, but it makes it seem like I’m copying you.”
Made sense. He asked anyway, wondering what was running through your pretty mind. “Why Umbreon?”
“It looks just like you. And according to Bulbapedia it’s a dark type Pokemon."
Mhm.
"They glow under the moonlight.”
You kissed his cheek and he felt himself begin to glow. Tell me more, he selfishly thought. Tell me every thought you've ever had of me.
“Says it’s rare. Takes special circumstances for it to appear. It’s nocturnal.”
It was so hard not to immediately run with his thoughts of where to capture them in the game, being perceived by you equal parts exhilarating and intimidating.
“Plus they really do just look like you.”
”I have red eyes?”
"Maybe from lack of sleep.”
Not when he slept near you. You continued without a care in the world for the performance of 'mature' hobbies, sitting unhesitatingly in this with him.
“Why Espeon?”
Nearly comical it felt so obvious.
“Psychic. You finding me out."
"Thank god I was so set on meeting you."
Thank god didn't begin to cover it.
"It’s also the color of the bushes in your backyard. And they can predict thoughts and movements.”
He could fill an entire journal on that point. You regarded him how he often did his work—thoroughly, fully, embracing the mission to the point it wore like a second skin. But that wasn't all of you. You didn't exist at the beginning and ending of knowing him.
“Espeon’s enchanting, too. Very pretty. Mysterious, alluring, like you want to be near them."
“Really? I feel like an open book.”
He was surprised it surprised you. Was this another way for you to talk down on yourself? You held universes, he could feel it; capacity and thought and personality beyond what he could possibly glean in a few days, or a week, since Spring, or even in the foreseeable years.
“I always want to know more. I always want more of you.”
You stared at him deep in thought. Gaze traveling up and down his face, catologing the translucent freckles and nonexistent sun spots. He could hear what you weren't saying, growing this second sense of what you might be thinking just from body cues. He was never great at that, but it clicked with you.
Wasn't that the understatement of the year?
His brain felt damn near empty in a way he’d never experienced, his body open to things he’d so long stuffed down. That effect began weeks ago—present at goddamn Arkham. He never cried. Not before you, not before then.
This felt inevitable somehow. You felt inevitable.
It was happening again; too busy staring, taking you in like the morning roll of waves, forgetting all conversation.
“Having the same problem as last night."
He squinted at you. Problem?
"I want to talk, I just don’t know about what.”
A distant horn shouted, threading him between here and New Jersey. It was so close to needing to hit the ground running; so close to flashing cameras and bad actors, long nights he'd spend aching for time like this.
“Everything’s been fast. Maybe we need to slow things for tonight.”
“You're becoming so meditative, babe.”
You commented on his widening smile, pinching at what you tried to convince him was a dimple, but he'd never noticed. Soon after his eyelids became leaden with your fingers in his hair, palms skimming against the fabric of his shirt. Conversation that became whispers between 'no, I'm not falling alseep'-s, like both of your bodies were weary from decades without the other.
A gust of wind roused him, and his sharp inhale woke you. Half his fingers were numb from holding yours.
“We probably shouldn’t sleep out here,” you warned, and he nodded.
“Right.” He looked at the car, half-awake. ”Want to nap in there?”
“Sounds lovely, sweets.”
Your pet names threatened the stability of his knees.
Pushing aside the condom box, shifting the Jenga under the seat, he reclined the second row as far as it would lean and draped himself at the most comfortable angle for your neck. You nestled into his shoulder, your body pressed into his side with such regulating pressure he swore he was about to fall asleep that instant.
“We really like sleeping in any place but a comfortable bed,” you remarked.
"Your bed's comfortable. Just a little tight."
"Uh huh."
“I do have a question.” Bruce turned his head at an angle that was slightly uncomfortable, but it helped you see him better. “What do you need to have the Tower feel more your own?”
You didn't take much time to think, probably because you looked about to pass out and didn't have much capacity for it; he was barely holding on as it was.
“Walter, but I can’t take him from my mom. No matter how much he likes you, I know she’s his favorite."
Walter. Hadn't occurred to him that he wouldn't be skirting his feet and making him trip much longer.
"I think that planting things was a good idea, but moreso than that, just having plants around. I love the bouquet. In fact, I miss it. If only it wasn't so fragile, I could've tucked it back here."
Buy out every flower shop in Gotham: check. “Plants. Anything else?"
“It gets really quiet in there. Some ambient noise? Something in the hallway to make it sound like there’s more movement?”
“Done.”
“Tacos. Cereal. Ramen. Stuff I’m used to eating.”
“Perfect.”
“Aren’t you gonna write this down?”
“I’ll remember it."
He could've talked at length about which ice creams he already had in a bulleted list. The shopping he had in his head, all the stores he wanted to stop by to spruce up the place. He could've talked at length about how excited he was to have you there; he could've told you why he didn't say so more often, not wanting to be pushy, and how when he thought of you moving in, the concept of the Tower was—
You kissed him and a sigh slipped out in lieu of finishing that thought.
"I love you."
"I love you," he purred, stealing another kiss before you slipped back into position.
While he hadn't prioritized one when picking a rental car, the sunroof was more than welcome. Through the smears of rain, they made themselves known. He wanted to embed this feeling. Needed to drink this later.
"Are you holding your breath?"
"No." He breathed bigger for you. "Just thinking of you and the stars."
"What about us?"
"You have lots in common." Inviting, glittery, bright. Always with him.
"Good thing I'll be spending a lot of time with them while you're out."
You didn't say it with melancholy, speaking like all was right with the world, and that feeling resurfaced that it might've been worth it, all of this. If any pieces fell differently, he liked to imagine he'd find his way here, but he couldn't be sure. He was too stubborn, too stuck. You unglued him.
"What you said about me being cursed?"
"Mhmm?"
His heartbeat pounded in his throat. "I don’t think I believe that anymore."
You nuzzled into the crook of his neck, settling your arm around him in a side hug. "Perfect."
Bruce waited for your breathing to go even, to grow deep and slow, before shutting his eyes. Melodic rain misted on the car's roof, and he was gone.
pairing: academic!bruce wayne x rival!reader
summary: after four years of intellectual foreplay with him, you're finally done talking.
tags: oral sex (m receiving), masturbation, rivals with benefits, rivals to lovers, porn with plot, jealousy
word count: 5k
You’d been looking for him all night. It’s humiliating to admit, but it’s true. It’s nothing new. You spent the last few years of college scanning classrooms; watching what he writes down, what he dismisses as irrelevant, and the precise way he rolls his eyes whenever an argument lacks logical grounding.
You’re not subtle. You don’t want to be. He knows it. Everyone does. Your peers and professors all know you analyze Bruce Wayne like he’s both an endangered species and an opponent who needs to be challenged at all times. But you wouldn’t be like this if it weren’t for him, firing back at every argument you make, insisting on every debate, to the point where you once had to tell him, over the audience’s laughter, to at least let you finish your point before raising his hand.
Well, you'll miss that. You take a sip of your drink, tasting cheap alcohol and melted ice. Everything else from your years at Gotham U could blur into smoke and you wouldn’t care. Leo’s house party is a lovely mess right now. You’ve traded smiles and thank yous for at least thirty times in the last hour. The place is packed to the rafters, the music vibrates in your sternum, and your friends are currently just colorful blurs in the crowd.
Going down the stairs, you tighten your grip on the plastic cup and grab the railing, fighting the stream of bodies moving upward. You catch a glimpse of Vic making out with someone in the shadows of the landing, but the crowd pushes you forward before you can confirm. Nat and Hanna are sprawled on the carpet with tarot cards, and that red blur in the kitchen can only be Sam. You weave through people and lean against the counter beside her.
“Hey, get any good shots?” you shout over the bass.
Sam turns, camera in hand, and the flash explodes right into your eyes. You flinch, blinking away the white spots.
“Oh no! You blinked!” she groans as the polaroid whirs out. “It looks awful. Film's pricey.”
“Aw, sorry,” you shrug, feeling the cold counter against your back. “I’ll buy you a new pack.”
“Nah.” She shakes her head, waving her hands. “That’s assuming one of us will actually get a job.”
You snort, finishing the last warm, sad sips of your drink. “So. Any plans for the future, by the way? What now?”
She shrugs. “I mean, send out resumes. Get a real job.”
You chuckle softly. She shakes her head but chuckles with you.
“You’ll be fine, Sam. I’d bet money on it if I had any.”
“Right. Keep this,” she hands you the polaroid. “It’s a cute memory. And you? What are you gonna do?”
“Hmm…” You shove the picture into your pocket. “I could always baby trap a billionaire.”
Her laugh cuts right through the music.
“Girl…” she starts, then loses it again. You grin at her reaction.
Everyone loves the running joke that you absolutely hate Bruce Wayne. Which is funny to you, because you don’t.
Sure, you once spent an hour and twenty minutes arguing about Foucault’s power and knowledge. But it wasn’t that serious. You agreed with at least fifty-five percent of what he said there. The fact that his jaw tenses and the whole room goes quiet every time you debate doesn’t mean anything. Neither does your long history of Kant versus Hegel debates, the time you argued about Nietzsche in the hallway, or that one time where Professor Weiss just gave up and let the two of you tear into each other.
Bruce tried being diplomatic with you at least five times during the first year. Private messages, saying he hoped he hadn’t been too harsh, he respected your point of view, he admired your argumentative skills. Once he finally realized you weren’t intimidated, you were actually into it, he stopped apologizing. It was a relief. You didn’t want to feel guilty about picking on him. And you both knew exactly where the line was. He was never a weirdo with you, and you never mentioned the fact that his bank account had too many zeros, even though it was ammunition handed to you on a silver platter with a neat little bow. There was an intellectual fair play between you that no one else at the university managed to replicate. It would have been strange, it was strange, for anyone else to try engaging with you the way you did with him in class. It lacked intimacy.
The current song ends, making you realize you left Sam talking to herself for a few minutes.
“What?” you shout, scanning the counter. Damn. All the peanuts are gone.
“I said your ‘target’ is launching his mayoral campaign in the living room.”
Your head snaps around.
“Seriously?!”
“No.” She tilts your head slightly to the left. You still can’t see him. Where is he? “He’s just being social. There.”
You squint.
You see Vic’s back as he talks to Hanna and Leo in the corner now, a group standing in front of one of the couches, and you’re sure—Oh. Wait. Oh?
Bruce is sitting on the couch with three colleagues, and he looks like he’s… talking? To everyone? And smiling. Since when does he do that? Since when does he even talk to anyone besides you? What is he doing?
You glance at Sam. Your face must be more expressive than you think, because she grins and raises both hands in mock surrender.
You look back at him. Yeah. He’s definitely talking. Nodding at something William said beside him, running his fingers through his hair… His hair is a mess in a way you’ve never seen before, dark strands going everywhere without any decorum. His tie is gone, the top two buttons of his shirt are deliciously undone, you can see a hint of chest hair — you’re going to lose your mind, you always thought he waxed everything — and he’s laughing, actually laughing, at something someone standing nearby says.
Who made him laugh?
You tilted your head, but you can’t tell who's there. You can’t hear anything over the music. But you can see him making sure everyone gets attention, nodding to one person, turning his head to listen to another…
You only realize you’re moving toward the couch when you bump into Leo and he turns to you.
“Hey! Didn’t see you there!” Leo grabs your shoulders and pulls you into a hug. “I’m so, so happy for us. For everyone!”
You're still frowning, in trance, and you feel the exact moment the devilish gears start turning in your head. Leo is hosting this party. This is his house.
You smile.
“Me too. I’m so happy. You have no idea. I think it only gets better from here.” Bruce is still in your line of sight over Leo’s shoulder. You whisper in Leo's ear. “Is there a guest room here? Five minutes. You won’t even notice I was there.”
It takes exactly three seconds for Leo to catch on.
It’s amazing how much you can get in life just by having no shame at all.
“Down the hall, two doors on the right.” He raises an eyebrow, but he's already leaning in to whisper back. This is why he’s your best friend forever. “Do I get all the details?”
“Honestly, if I pull this off?” You wink, letting him go. “Nope. NDA.”
You leave Leo behind, making sure your extrovert-for-a-day is still in view. His cheeks are flushed now, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, but he’s fully engaged in conversation. Dopamine must be hitting him hard tonight. Cute.
You cross the room, approaching from the side just enough to enter his peripheral vision. You don't want to enter his little group chat. You just need him to see you.
It doesn’t take long, because Bruce’s blue eyes find you almost immediately. Of course they do. You give him the slightest nod and head for the stairs without looking back, betting everything on his curiosity.
You reach the stairs without turning around, trusting that he will—he is coming. You stop at the same corner where you saw Vic kissing someone minutes earlier. You just need to turn…
And he’s right behind you. A shy, content smile on his lips.
“They played The Cranberries earlier,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Made me think of you.”
He looks buzzing.
Is he nervous? Trying to soothe himself after too much social interaction? You’ve never seen him touch his hair this much.
“So you were thinking about me, Wayne?” You step closer, using the loud music as an excuse to enter his personal space. Instinctively, he does the same, one hand braced against the wall behind you.
You discreetly breathe him in. He smells like his usual expensive cologne, but no trace of alcohol. Your lips curl upward.
“Not that I can help it. I think I’ve seen your T-shirt more than my own reflection this semester.”
You chuckle, more at the attempt than anything. Now that he’s away from the wave of people downstairs, you can admit this social version looks good on him. His blue eyes look way softer when he smiles.
“I own other shirts,” you notice that he nods before you finish, the same way he did on the couch. Must be a habit. “Just so you know.”
“Oh, I know. I never doubted it."
You shake your head, grinning, then gesture with your hand. This is it. He leans in even closer, lowering his head like you’re about to tell him a life-changing secret.
“There’s a guest room upstairs. I don’t know if it’s empty, but I hope it is.” You make sure to look straight into his eyes, resisting the urge to run your fingers over his open collar. Your next words are a mere whisper. “I want to suck you off. If you want.”
You watch his entire body go still.
The extrovert mask drops instantly. He steps back just enough to really look at you, eyes locked on yours. You hold his gaze, letting him search your face for whatever he’s looking for. The silence stretches long enough that you want to say Come on, we’re both adults, but you don’t rush him. You’re pretty sure there’s still the faintest smile on your lips, no matter how hard you try to stay serious.
When he finally speaks, his tone isn’t that different from the steady one he uses in class. “Now?”
“I’m feeling festive.” You really shouldn’t push it, but it’s too late. You're having too much fun. The same familiar frown is already on his face, and your smile is now ear to ear. Your brain scrambles for a reasoning that will keep this from turning into a debate about why here and now. And why with him.
“Bruce,” you bite the inside of your cheek. Something definitive. Something to shut him up fast. Something to let him know you're serious, but you're not that serious. You're not asking to marry him.
Your eyes flick to the couch where he was earlier, then back to him, fully focused on you. He’ll go back to that couch if you say the wrong thing. Back to entertaining five, ten, fifteen colleagues who think they know him.
“I need to drain every bit of life out of your body. I mean that.”
The fuck was that.
You suspect the fact that you’re never one hundred percent serious about anything isn’t helping you right now, but your gaze drops from his eyes to his mouth and you pout, plead, “Please…”
He doesn’t answer. His eyes timidly follow your fingers reaching for his shirt, toying with the wrinkled collar. The air goes still. The music feels distant now. And you can’t see anyone else in the room when his lips finally part, quieter than ever.
“Upstairs?” Bruce asks.
Leo’s house is a sensory nightmare for him. Hours shaking hands and handing out smiles has left Bruce’s heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, and his blood racing like a live wire. Usually, he would have bolted by now, but he’d made an exception tonight. He’d spent an hour rehearsing his "normal" self in front of the mirror. He unbuttoned his collar, ditched the tie, forced himself to socialize with more people than he could count. He even laughed.
Under the right conditions, he actually could play the version of Bruce Wayne that belongs at a party instead of a library. Still, the moment he saw your face felt like spotting a small buoy in a vast, unfamiliar sea.
He searches your eyes for any clue of what you might be planning. It’s an instinct he’s developed over the last few years, the byproduct of the intellectual chess you’ve played. His challenge is always the same: what’s your next move?
“Two doors on the right,” you answer, sounding more like an order than a suggestion.
Bruce nods, letting you lead the way. He almost regrets how short the walk down the hallway is. You find the door and slip inside, him right behind you. The click of the lock turns the roar of the party into a muffled hum. The room is small and impersonal, dimly lit by a streetlamp outside that casts long, angular shadows across the floor. At least the air is fresher here.
Bruce leans against the white wooden door, then pushes off immediately, realizing he might be blocking your path if you want to leave.
“So…” you begin, circling the perimeter like a shark. “What was that back there?”
“Networking.” Bruce shoves his hands into his pockets to hide the tremor from you, his mind vibrating at a thousand thoughts per minute. So, this is an interrogation. Right. He can practically feel your neurons firing at full speed, too.
“Networking?” you repeat, finally stopping in front of him. The arch of your eyebrow is subtle, but he knows you well enough to recognize it even in the dark.
“What, too late for that?” He bites the inside of his cheek. He can’t let his lips curl upward right now. You’re getting annoyed at him. “It’s what people do at these things.”
You let out a short, dry laugh. "Is that so? And how is that going for you?"
"I’m not sure. You tell me." He runs his fingers through his hair, like the gesture could reorganize his thoughts. "What’s my grade so far?"
“I could give you a grade, if you actually contributed something substantial to the conversation, instead of pretending to—” You stop mid lecture, frowning. “Don’t do that.”
He freezes. "Do what?"
“Don’t nod before I’ve finished speaking. I’m not them.”
Bruce tilts his head, approaching the situation like he would approach a time bomb. This silence is static; dense, but familiar. It's like when he's being redundant in his arguments, and you want to take the opportunity to assert your superiority, of course, but what you really want is to understand why he isn't doing better.
“Okay. No nodding,” he says. “I’m here to keep my colleagues from hawking the 'Bruce Wayne is a freak' story to some tabloid three months from now.”
You cross your arms.
"And to show I appreciated their company these last years," he continues. "Which I did."
“I know you did,” you answer, arms still crossed. “I know you do remember everyone’s names.”
He nods deliberately this time, making it clear it’s a conscious choice. “You know me.”
“Superficially.”
He smiles, a small, honest thing. “Better than most.”
“Within a context. A controlled environment," you shake your head. Of course it’d strike a nerve with you. He… likes it. It's strangely exciting to be caught up in your hot-and-cold behavior toward him. It helps him come out of his shell a bit."But knowing you in a private context—"
“You could just come up to me,” he cuts you off, “and say the most out-of-pocket thing ever, and I’ll understand it’s a code to talk in private, and I’ll follow you there—”
You stop talking mid-sentence. He stops too. An awkward silence hangs in the air.
“…A code?” You ask, tilting your chin up as if scrutinizing a particularly flawed thesis.
"Telling me you want to suck me off out of nowhere isn't a code?" Bruce counters, sounding way more indignant than he intended, and he doesn't want you to feel reject, but he doesn't think you're being serious here, and if you are—
A slow smile spreads across your lips. He arches an eyebrow. He should've been more indignant.
"Is it, though?" You challenge softly.
“What? Here? Out of nowhere?”
You tilt your head, mimicking his ridiculous tone from minutes earlier. “It’s what people do at these things.”
“Are you serious?” He looks at you, then at the flimsy wood of the door that offered no real privacy, then back at you. “Anyone could walk in at any moment. The optics alone—”
“And…?” You take a step forward, too close now. This isn't a prank. He gets it now. You're trying to actually kill him.
"I took you for," he stutters, "a bit more discreet, more calculated—"
"Bruce," your breath brushes against his, warm and intoxicating. He hates the fact that he leans in, just a few millimeters, reacting to you like a compass needle to a magnet. You always lead. He always follows. "Someone fucks someone… It’s just another Tuesday."
He feels like a thousand ants are crawling up his legs, his arms, all over his skin. He’s used to you keeping him on his toes during a debate, but this is so far off the script he feels lost on the stage, the play moving forward while he stands there, having forgotten his lines. Are you serious about it? You’ve never been one for cruel pranks, which makes this terrifyingly real. You're not drunk, and he’s stone-cold sober. Is this a momentary rush? An one-time thing? A long-buried crush finally surfacing? He feels like he'll faint just for humoring the idea.
…Is he down for it?
"And then what?"
“You can go back to your little friends, if you want,” you murmur, but you both know it’s decided. Your playful smile brings out the soft curve of your cheeks and the spark in your eyes, catching him off guard. He knows the lines of your face so well. With everything else he should be thinking about, he’s stuck on the silent history you share: the hushed debates before class; those knowing looks when someone missed the point; the countless hours at side-by-side library tables, something you'd never admit to, but he knew was intentional…
When you finally lean in, he's already following your lead like a sailor answering a Siren’s call. He closes the distance, his tongue eagerly welcomed by the softness of your mouth. It’s a dance that feels both new and familiar, an extension of what you’ve been doing for four years. Without an audience, it's just the two of you and your hungry, hitched breaths.
Bruce cups your face, stroking your cheekbone with his thumb. Endless flashes of rivalry and kinship cascade through his mind. It's strangely tender, holding you in his hands like this, feeling the sweet scent of your perfume and the softness of your hair delight his senses. When you break the kiss, he almost groans in protest. He doesn't want to let you go.
“Sit on the bed, handsome,” you whisper, tousled hair and kiss-bruised lips, but never less unwavering.
He’s caught in the contrast between who you were in the classroom and who you are right now, and he wants to submit, he does, but he also wants to soothe the gnawing voice in the back of his mind that needs to check, once again, if you're sure. He could ask, or…
“Make me,” he defies, voice light with a playful challenge, but his sharp eyes are laser-focused on your reaction. You offer no words; instead, you bite your lip, guiding him by the waist until the mattress meets the back of his knees. It leaves no room for doubt.
Bruce leans in to kiss you again, but you dodge, shaking your head.
"You're so damn needy."
Pushing his shoulders down until he’s finally sitting on the bed, you lean over him and begin to kiss his neck. A nibble, at first, testing. Then stronger, leaving a slow, wet trail.
“A-ah,” a breathy whimper escapes before he can stop it, giving away the effect you have on him.
Your fingers find the buttons of his shirt and you start to work on them with a calm precision, one by one, each open button exposing more skin. He inhales sharply, trying to maintain some semblance of control.
"You're so, so gorgeous," you purr. Your tongue trails down his throat, and he can only gasp as it sends a heat straight to his pants.
"You too," he murmurs. His hands hang in the air, unsure if he should pull your hips closer or not, before coming to rest on your waist.
You suck a bruise into the skin of his collarbone, then pull back to look at him.
“Can I?”
He nods.
Bruce expects you to get straight to the point, but instead, you slide your hand across his chest, feeling his heart thudding hard under your palm, before dropping your gaze with hungry curiosity. The seconds of anticipation are torturously slow as your fingers toy with the seam of his trousers, until his heavy breathing mingles with the dry rasp of the zipper sliding down.
His cock springs out, hard and ready. It’s long, with dense, dark hair framing the base and trailing in a happy trail up to his navel. You bite your cheek. He doesn’t shave.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, his voice huskier than usual, blue eyes searching yours with an honesty that’s almost painful. “I haven't been with anyone in a while.”
“Don’t apologize,” you reply. “I like the friction.”
You kneel in front of him, lightly teasing the head of his length while he adjusts his hips to give you better access. The dim light from the window reflects softly on your face, and Bruce feels his own face flush. He fights the sudden, boyish urge to look away, anchored by the weight of your stare. He senses you'd want him to look at you right now, you want to see him blushing and panting for you.
With your hands gripping on his thighs to steady yourself, you lean forward. Bruce closes his eyes the moment he feels the first touch, his lashes trembling against his flushed cheeks as your warm tongue slides hungrily over him. A choking sound escapes from the back of his throat.
You work with your tongue, tracing the tip, savoring a faint taste of salt and desire before taking him all the way in.
You take him in with a slow rhythm, your cheek grazing his pubes as you draw him deep, saliva slicking skin and making a mess of you both. The air in the small room is stifling, thick with the ragged sound of his undoing, years of unresolved tension finally boiling over.
"Mmm..." a sound of satisfaction hums in your throat at the sight. "You like that, don't you?"
"Yeah… Fuck…" Bruce tosses his head back, his Adam’s apple bobbing with a sharp, heavy swallow.
You watch him from below, eyes locked on his face as you take him deep, feeling the heavy thrum of his pulse against the roof of your mouth. He’s drenched in sweat, his linen shirt clinging to him, hair wild and eyes clamped shut, gasping through the haze of pleasure.
"Please—" he chokes out. "Don't stop… I'm right there, please—"
You look up, eyes fixed on his as you work, wanting to see the moment his logic shatters. Bruce’s jaw is locked, his brows furrowed in an expression that fluctuates between pleasure and agony. He seems to be trying to solve a complex mental equation just to keep from crossing the edge too soon.
"Hey," you stop for a second, your tongue tracing a slow circle at his tip. "Focus on me."
He lets out a nasal laugh, almost a sob. "Hard... to focus... on anything else... when you’re being so... incisive."
Your mouth sink back onto him, your rhythm relentless, draining every ounce of that carefully practiced diplomacy. The obscenely wet sounds of your mouth fill the room, joining Bruce’s desperate whimpers. When he's right on the edge, his hands tangle in your hair, and you think he'll quicken your pace, but he just slows you down. You look up, breathless, meeting his blown-out gaze.
"I'm close," he tells you, voice velvety. In this soft, golden light, his eyes are the deepest blue, as drawing as the Pacific, but a thousand times warmer. "Come here."
Bruce grips your waist with surprising strength and hoists you up, sitting you on his lap to face him. The proximity is dizzying. Your hand finds his length just as he leans in, capturing your lips in a slow, starving kiss.
His hands move to cover yours, large palms squeezing yours so that you two begin to stroke his cock in a shared, chaotic rhythm. The friction of overlapping hands and the searing heat of skin on skin bring him to the very brink. When he breaks the kiss, your lips are still glistening, flushed and parted.
"Open up," he coaxes, biting his lip. "Please."
You obey. He slides two fingers into your mouth, mimicking a lewd, rhythmic thrust while his other hand continues to guide your strokes.
“Nice visuals, hmm?” you purr against his skin when his fingers slip out.
He doesn't answer with words, only leans in to steal another kiss. “Mhmm,” he breathes against your mouth.
You groan into him, the sound muffled by the kiss as his body gives one final spasm. You feel his shoulders uncoiling as he reaches his peak. At the last second, his hand shifted to catch his release, fingers slick as he collapses, burying his face in the crook of your neck.
It last a good, sweet moment. You immediately mourn the loss of his warm body against yours when he pulls away. The muffled beat of the music on the other side of the door seems to come from a distant, forgotten world. Bruce steps away to the small bathroom in the corner. You do your best to look presentable again, smoothing your blouse and running your hands through your hair, feeling the adrenaline ebb. You don't pry into what Bruce does, but when he's finally back, he is once again the quiet billionaire and the brilliant academic.
"Hey," he starts, his sweet voice now a memory you’ll have a hard time forgetting.
"Hey." You reach out, your trembling fingers finding their way to his hair. You tuck a few rebellious strands that insist on falling over his forehead. "You okay?"
He closes his eyes for a second under your touch, then nods. "You?"
"That was good," you answer, and your voice comes out softer than intended. It’s ironic; you’d just had him in the most intimate way, but the simple exchange of looks now makes you suddenly shy. Bruce is silent, too. You search his gaze, urging to decipher it. "What are you thinking about?"
"I was planning on returning the favor," he confesses.
"Oh. You don't have to." Even if the idea of having him tucked between your thighs is deliciously tempting. "Not here, at least."
"No?" Bruce arches an eyebrow, that teasing glint returning to his eyes.
"Not that I don't want to, believe me," you chuckle softly, feeling your face heat up. "But as you said, this door doesn't have a key. And if someone walks in and catches the Prince of Gotham red-handed, your tabloids are going to have a field day. And they must be missing you downstairs."
"I came here mostly for you," he says, leaning in a little closer. You can still smell the scent of sex and sweat clinging to his expensive cologne. "Just so you know."
You smile, your heart doing a somersault in your chest. "Is that so?"
"You know me."
"A little, yeah," you agree, and the soft smile he gives you, that intimate, secret, private smile makes your heart ache in a new way. "So, if you want... we could... maybe..."
"I don't know," he looks at the ceiling, feigning deep thought. "What's the next party you plan to corner me in?"
"I mean, we could—I was thinking we could just—" you cut yourself off, the academic eloquence failing you as the heat rises up your neck. Bruce bursts out laughing, a genuine, husky sound that fills the small space. Maybe he deserves you going back to being mean. "Ah. Right. You're funny."
He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he reaches out and hands you the small Polaroid Sam had taken earlier. "Is this yours?"
You take it, feeling the texture in your fingers. "Yeah."
"You dropped it," he says.
"I was significantly busy."
"Oh, I noticed that," Bruce replies, and the sparkle in his eyes makes it clear he won't be forgetting the details of this anytime soon. "So... Saturday, on Vetta? Maybe at seven?"
You humor it. Vetta's a rooftop restaurant in the center of Old Town, quite far from the chaos of Gotham U. It sounds good. "Like a date?"
Bruce stops by the door, hand already on the knob. He turns to you with a dazzling gaze that blurs the line between the quiet billionaire and the opponent you’ve learned to love challenging.
"Or a meeting of friends. Or non-friends," he teases, "You can choose."
You stand up from the bed, facing him head-on, chin up. "How about... a debate?"
He smiles for you, a smile that lights up his face in a way you’ve never seen in any lecture hall. Bruce holds the door for you, allowing the sound of the party to flood back into the silence of the room like a wave.
"Be ready, then," he says, as you pass him. "I've been known to be quite sharp."
"Oh, trust me," you pause, depositing a kiss to his cheek. He happily leans in. "I know for a fact your edges are all soft."
finally got time to catch up with batgirl (2024) and i'm so happy to see cassandra being recognized as a member of the family again... i still need to see her interact with bruce in the batman mainline, but for now i'll be taking this.
