Fateful Beginnings
LVI. “embers”
read on AO3 🦇
parts: previous / next
plot: he knows. he came back. what now?
pairing: battinson!bruce wayne x fem!reader
cw: 18+
words: 10.7k
a/n: the chapter name, how it leads into the next and plays off of it... these chunk of chapters have my heart, y'all !! ilysmmmm <3
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that already.”
Bruce plunked the spoon into his pint until it hit the bottom, switching hands so it didn’t freeze off. He’d uttered the same apology four times since he’d come in five minutes ago; once to Walter for almost smashing his tail in the door, once about the store being out of Phish Food and needing to get Americone Dream, another for it being melted, and a fourth time just now.
“I was being an asshole.” He watched you play with your ice cream, separating the clusters to eat them first. “On purpose.”
“I already know that.” You sighed, leaning into the couch cushions. The air here was stale. The silence much too quiet.
“I’m scared of killing you.” His mouth globbed with adrenaline-laced spit.
“You won’t.”
The edge in your voice was reasonable, your frustration palpable. He did his best to relax so he wouldn’t get caught up in it—he so often caught every sliver of emotion in you. “People don’t like me. Enough to try to kill me and anyone who gets in the way.”
“You were a kid, Bruce.”
“No, the flooding two years ago. They sent a bomb to Wayne Tower. Alfred opened my mail and it almost killed him.”
“Then I won’t open your mail,” you muttered, though your glare softened.
A single tendril of flame licked up his arm. “I didn’t come here to negotiate. I came to apologize and try to understand you.”
“Understand what?”
“Why you think it’s worth it. To watch people die.”
“You’re more fixated on death than I am.”
“Can we…” he shook his head. “This feels off.”
“That’s what happens when you tell someone they were never needed. When you say the time you spent with them was at gunpoint.”
When he sat a little straighter, you did too. When he tried to stifle his sigh, you internalized it like swallowing a knife. It didn’t feel right to push this right now—every ligament screaming for you to just relax, let off of him—but with that comment he’d struck a nerve that only knew how to fight.
“I should’ve never said that.” Remorse cocooned him, and he felt like a broken record. “I’m sorry.”
In the combustible heat of shame and anger, you barely stopped a ‘doesn’t mean it isn’t true’ from slipping past your teeth.
Another few ticks on the clock.
“Has it always only been about monitoring me?”
Okay, you steeled yourself. We’re getting into it.
“It was at first, and it was a reason I stayed for the rest. Of course it was. I don’t want you to die.”
You shoved another spoonful of ice cream in your mouth and sat in the ensuing silence. Glances at him didn’t clarify if he’d actually wanted to come back, and it made you sick to think him sitting here was an obligation.
Eyeing him like wary prey, you put your spoon back in the pint and stared him down.
“If it hadn’t happened, if I hadn’t lied,” it still felt absolutely mind-melting to say out loud, like giving away the world’s greatest secret. “Would you have spent time with me?”
He hesitated like you wouldn’t like the answer. You tensed. “No.”
Your chest burned. He leaned a bit closer, that line back between his scrunched brows. Your heart skipped.
“But that goes for anyone.” His shoulders rose almost to kiss his ears, then dropped with his exhale. “The more time has passed, the more you’re… an exception.”
“Because I keep bothering you?”
“It works.”
“So I am a bother.” Oh, it felt so whiny to say plainly, and you wanted to whack yourself upside the head the second it reached open air.
“I’m saying persistence was the only way in.”
Memories of shuffled, hasty footsteps through the Tower as he all but chased you out. Of being cursed out in the kitchen, as biting as he knew how. Had he forgotten?
“You hate my persistence.” Why was your voice so quiet when you spoke, when every thought pounded against your eardrums?
“Because it’s uncomfortable to be shown myself by someone who refuses to back down.”
Waxing poetic. Just when you thought you had him figured out, he’d upend part of the puzzle so you couldn’t truly comprehend him. He oscillated wildly between baby bird incapable of speech and blooming poet.
Feigning total indifference while your heart thumped around its cage, you cleared your gummy throat. “And what exactly have I shown you about yourself?”
“That I’m scared.”
“Somehow I think you already knew that.”
It didn’t exactly feel like a waste of time, but it didn’t feel like anything exceptional. Until he leaned in with a glint in his eye, and your body reacted like he was proposing.
“You have frustrated me more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Proposing. Hah. Why was it so enchanting to hear him disparage you?
The hair that hung into his face. His grip on the carton. His continued earnestness, every word opening him like a flower in bloom.
“And it brings out sides of myself I don’t want to see.”
Pathetically needy, your gaze dropped to his lips. You loathed how distracting he was, your eyes glossing over as he continued.
“You’ve been right from the beginning. That I’m rude.”
Check.
“Have tunnel vision.”
Very much so.
“That what I’m doing might not be the only way.”
Of course there’s other ways.
“Even though it has to be.”
The enchantment snagged at his firmness. “Why does it have to be?”
“I don’t know.”
You didn’t always believe him, especially when you argued. But times like these, when his defenses were down and his voice was worn, you couldn’t help but think he was speaking more honestly than he ever had in his life.
It never felt like the right time with him. Always felt like one noise too loud would scare him off. But with a string this frayed, did it even matter anymore? And if he really didn’t know…
“What I was going to say when we got the slushie is that you seem to do a lot of your work in alleys.” You set the pint on the arm of the couch, hoping Walter was consumed enough by batting Bruce’s leg that he wouldn’t launch up and snatch it. “And only in Gotham. It’s not the only place with crime.”
“And?”
An edge back to his voice. Just a little, a tad, but you were aware of it like a gunshot every time.
“Didn’t your parents get killed in an alley?”
“Yes.”
He stopped eating, and a jolt of cold went through you.
“Why don’t you go after bigger corruption? Like. Nationwide.” You folded your hands in your lap and tried to channel something pleasant. Less intimidating. For a conversation about his dead parents. For a conversation after he’d just found out you’d been lying to him every time you’d been together.
You melted when his shoulders sagged. So much that it scared you. So much more than you ever did with anyone else.
“I know it won’t bring them back, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“Okay.” You shifted toward him, softening your tone. “When will Batman end for you?”
His pulse raced. You were handling him gently, sweetly, like luring him into a trap. “I don’t know.”
More don’t knows. Why did he always act like this? It was embarrassing how his brain refused to fucking work around you. Aggravating how you managed to ask every question he’d ever shoved to the back of his mind.
“You really have no idea?”
“When it’s… finished.”
He hated how pathetic it made him feel, how broken.
“When will it be finished?”
“When there’s no more crime.”
You could see on his face he knew it was an unserious answer. There was simply no end to crime as long as humans existed with all their varied wants and needs.
“So. You know it won’t bring them back. But will it stop the guilt if you were to finish?”
“See, this.” He almost laughed, sitting back a little on the couch as he took some deep breaths. “When you do things like that. Talking like you’ve already figured me out.”
“Maybe you’re not that difficult.”
“Maybe you’re just you.”
You eyed him, the hours you thought you'd never see him again wearing down on you. “You want to hear my theory? It’s blunt.”
He hesitated, then nodded. You sat up and stared right into him, despite how difficult it was when he had a pull like that.
“I think the only way it’ll be over is when you die. When you die like they did.”
His visage flickered. You resisted the instinct to soothe him.
“I think you blame yourself because that’s much less terrifying for a kid than admitting it could happen again, at any time, for any reason. And Batman is how you cope.”
After grilling the contents of someone’s soul, you were prouder than you should’ve been; nonetheless, the obscene accomplishment of configuring his isolated pieces into anything coherent brought new air into your lungs.
He was Annapurna. When you were this close to his summit, it was so intoxicating as to be spellbinding, survivor bias be damned.
“I’m not going to give it up.”
“Did I ask you to?”
His jaw twitched.
“Seems pretty telling your mind went there.”
His shoulders tightened. This was the moment where he left, pulled away, abandoned you. The moment your brain always switched off and you’d scramble for any way to bring him back.
“This is where you get worked up. I can see it.” You slapped your hands on your thighs, making Walter startle. “And then you get all pissy and run.”
“I won’t do that again.”
“You didn’t promise.”
“Promise.”
He watched you visibly relax, and the picture of you dehazed. Was that edge in you really anger or something else entirely?
“It’s hard for you to trust people.”
“So?”
You were getting defensive. Interesting.
In moments like these, he hit a wall. For how much poking and prodding you did to him, and how much he liked to poke holes in what you said, he didn’t really poke at you. You remained cloaked in mist, and it began to make sense why.
“What do you need to know to trust me?”
You laughed. “I’m the liar.”
“I made it so you had to. I made myself untrustworthy.”
“It’s not your fault, I don’t want you to start thinking that. Those hallucinations have to feel so fucking real, it makes sense why you’d resist. Especially coming from me.”
He repeated himself softly, after accepting your words in some quiet, intentional pause. “What do you need to trust me?”
His words haunted you, echoing the shape of what everyone else had ever said. “Is it really just me being annoying keeping you here?”
“No. I’m sorry for saying that.” His stomach twisted into knots when you grew sheepish, fiddling with your hands, eyes skimming the floor. He needed to be careful with how he spoke to you. “It wasn’t true and wasn’t okay.”
“Do you actually want me around? After all that?”
And there he sat in the car, vision cloudy, head spinning, with so much emotion tearing through him he could hardly think. “I almost left. Drove to the airport. Got out of the car.” The weight of his bag pulled down his arm, the swirl of the fresh air filling his excavated lungs. “I’m still hurt. But I had to be honest with myself.”
You watched him swallow, shifting in his seat. It was a miracle he was even here with you and all you wanted was to erode every argument he ever gave. Why did he tolerate you?
“I can’t be mad at you for lying if I wouldn’t be here without it. I was fixated on there being no witness, and the medication has helped. I can’t hold it against you that I got in my own way.”
“You still have the right to not trust me.” Your words were breathy, stretching between you.
He stared at you a long beat, then sidestepped your question. “You’re the first person I think to call. More than Alfred. Dory. I do want you around. But you can’t be.”
This again? “You’re not gonna kill—”
“The last time we kissed, I saw a bullet in your head.”
Context painted the last day with a kinder hue.
You kept forgetting he was like this not because he was some prick; he was scarred, and it bled into every interaction. And it looked like it absolutely destroyed him each time he came to clean the wreckage.
“You could’ve told me.”
This was why, even after he’d accepted coming back to apologize, he’d taken an additional hour to calm himself. Because he knew on the off chance you let him back in, the both of you would end up knee-deep in this.
“Every day you’re with me you’re wearing a target. You know that. It’s not just my paranoia, or guilt, or anything else. People like me either spend their days locked inside or swimming in security. Your life effectively ends.”
That defiance piqued again; so concerned with protecting this bullshit life he thought you treasured so much. How was this not a front for how he really felt? That you weren’t important enough to him to keep around?
“Can’t spend time with your friends. Can’t go to the club. Can’t go to a damn café. Nothing is spontaneous, your freedom is gone, every move you make is plastered to some shitty tabloid or the front of Google. My mother went crazy from it. And look what the hell happened the one time they didn’t have security.”
“You haven’t had security.”
Too mean. When he mentioned his mother his eyes went dark.
“And I’m sorry about your mom.”
Two people with mommy issues. One already dead and one seemingly always about to.
“I haven’t needed security. I was barely seen for twenty years. There’s little way to stalk me and no reason to.”
“What about City Hall?”
“Swarming with security. Whether or not they’re corrupt.”
You drew a deep breath, his grief humanizing him just enough to keep your tongue in check. “I think I’ve missed that you actually care, and you aren’t just some loser helicoptering my every move.”
“And—you get an interview with me, someone finds your sole routine of coming to City Hall, and you’re held for ransom. I remember how that affected you.”
It was all too easy to forget the nightmares when you were around him. Your back tingled from the memory of his touch that night. It hadn’t been all that long since you’d first felt his embrace, and you would never forget it.
Nervous of his flight risk, you reassured him. “But I’m still here. I want to be, too.”
“We get papped going into Penguin’s club and someone tries to stab you on the way out. That journalist coming out of hiding to give you a warning. Not to mention all the bullshit online. The possibility of you being on a list. The signs are all there. And the longer you spend with me the more people know you, know us, and learn how we move.”
Like he was spitting the words out rather than willingly, consciously saying them. Like he was afraid speaking it aloud would magically make it come true.
“What about you? They know how you move. Especially with you going more public. Getting involved in politics, too. Divisive.”
His blinks were more deliberate now, his jaw flexing. “Another reason I can’t have you around.”
“Can’t have me around? As a simple friend?”
“I can’t risk that.”
“You can’t risk that for me?”
“If you understood the gravity of the situation,”
This was where you drew the line: when he talked to you like a little kid. “Don’t act like I could never have a clue as to what it’s like. That it would be impossible for me to consent to being a public figure.”
“With me, it is.”
You leaned in real close, making him unable to look away even if he wanted to. “You think you’re cursed.”
“The only way I can guarantee your safety is to cut things off.”
The shaky breath that painted your cheek when he exhaled speared you.
“You can’t do that no matter what. If I stay in Gotham without you. If I stay here.”
You chose each word like a bargaining chip. “What you’re saying is if I stay in your life at all, something happening would be your fault. But something happening is inevitable regardless of knowing you.”
“It will be worse if we keep talking.”
“Let’s follow that: talking. I stay here, you go back. We call or text regularly. Hanging out just like we’ve been doing, but virtually.”
It was like he forgot how to do anything but sigh; completely overwhelmed by your presence and how you scored him like a fish. “Just tell me what you think.”
“It doesn’t matter where I am. You think being in your life at all is to be damned. And that you have to do everything you can to make up for it, including cutting off…” weird analogy, but you’d run with it. “A perfectly healthy limb.”
“Death isn’t something to tempt.”
“To know you isn’t to die.”
You could tell that rattled him.
“But what if it is?”
This was embedded so deep… he needed softness, at least some of it. Not like you could give it, god, you were so fucking thorny, but at minimum you’d poke these holes to make him better for the next.
“What if I’m willing to take that risk?”
“You don’t even recognize it as one.”
“I know you’re famous. I know Gotham’s dangerous, I know your ideals are controversial. I know I don’t know what it’s like to have every move in a magazine. I know I might hate it, and don’t love it so far.”
His eyes tracked your face but were blank, far away. You relented.
“I know it makes me more visible. I know things would be limited. But just last week you were wanting me to stay. Trying to convince me.” Your heart pounded. “You said there was something for me there.”
Yeah. When he was in a panicked rush and not thinking clearly. Before he ever knew what it was like to kiss you. Before he knew your home. Before he knew how deep this ran. “You’d leave in six weeks anyway.”
“So why not stay? Think of it like a college class. I’m your table mate for a while, then we go our separate ways.”
Your analogies proved you didn’t understand the risk—there were a million ways Gotham could kill you. He barely slept as it was. “Six weeks is a lot of time for someone to take a shot at you.”
Obviously frustrated, you sat back and shook your head. “We’re going in circles at this point.”
“I’m not worth that.” His voice was its own ghost.
“Bruce,”
“Nothing is. No one is. If I could go back and never know my parents, I would.”
He broke your heart when he got like this. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. You’re shaking.” You placed your hands on his, sliding up his arms until you pulled him closer, holding him steady. His breathing was in shallow pants; not as bad as you’d ever seen it, not even close, but an alarm bell just the same. You lowered your voice. “You’re scared. You don’t have to be. Not with me.”
Bruce began to sweat at the memory of Alfred’s conversation those weeks ago.
“What do you want?” He blurted.
“From what?”
“Me. This. Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
Only one thing came to mind, though it felt irrelevant and too raw to say. Unless he’d asked it because he wanted you to be vulnerable too. Scared to be the only one in the open right now. You leaned away, placing your hands back on your thighs.
“Someone to like me who doesn’t have to. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
It slotted into understanding immediately. Explained why you were so persistent despite his every objection and constant brushing you off. In his detective work, the hardest case to solve was always the most satisfying.
You had a similar look as when you’d said you liked him, which sent a flush to his cheeks.
“Is that why you keep being around me? I’m the last person who has to like you.”
He felt the weight of his words differently now, hyperaware of being too harsh. Which only further complicated things; how could he reject you when the greatest thing you wanted was to not be rejected?
“You’re the first person that has to. I know about you. If you showed you didn’t like me, it would put you at risk.”
“But I do show you that. Did,” he corrected, gritting his teeth before the next sentence. “Your friends did too. Why keep pressing?”
Shrinking under his gaze, you pulled your arms across your chest in a makeshift hug. “I can see why you hate convos like these.”
You were the most ridiculous exception, pulling and tugging at all of the most tender parts of him, and he felt it in every aching beat of his heart. “You don’t have to convince someone to like you.”
Gotham was burning. He hadn’t checked in with Alfred in days. For all he knew, the city could be in complete and utter turmoil, but there was no way in hell he was getting off this couch. Nothing required more of his focused attention than prodding at this lie you told yourself.
“I know it took… pushing… so it’s ironic, but. I like you.”
“Not enough.”
Your voice was aged like an old barrel of wine; weathered by the hell that the people who were supposed to care put you through. His thoughts pulsed with indexing every mistake they’d ever made so he never stepped on the same bruise.
Like a coward, those thoughts wouldn’t materialize as anything but.
While you sat under his attentive stare, you reminisced on your radical—or naive—history of perseverance. Regardless of how many times people cut you down, it was an ever-present motor propelling you toward connection. It’d stalled the past two years, completely uninterested in dating conversations with Mar and anyone in Gotham’s scene. Until you met Bruce, and here unearthed this ancient and devastated child that grasped so desperately to feel loved.
You messed with a frayed section in the middle of the couch between you and Bruce. “Anyway, we’ve moved really far from the reason you came. Did you say everything you needed to?”
Needy—he felt needy. Greedy too, if he were truly honest with himself. To know you past your spiky exterior. To be known, despite every last organ in him being programmed the other way. He never sat in these conversations long enough to know what lived on the other side.
The familiar feeling of being on the path; this sizzle up his spine and the numbness in his hands when he felt close to some truth. When he felt his body calibrating.
“Why do you stare at those lavender plants?”
Your mouth twisted into something half-smile and half-frown. “My grandpa planted them. When my mom got sick. Wanted something nice for her to look at since she had to stay home a lot, and lavender is her favorite.”
The manner in which you talked about your family was endearing. Like simply talking about them brought them into the space. He could feel how much you missed them.
“That’s why it’s worth it, to answer your earlier question.”
He didn’t know how, when, or why he got this feeling of slipping whenever you spoke. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment that talking to you moved from a nuisance to necessity, but that feeling was still present despite the lie. Knowing full well, with all of his good judgment, that you could do it again and you could probably do it better, but he was absolutely powerless to not believe you.
“It’s terrible and great because they’ll plant fucking lavender bushes for you even if they have bad knees. The pain is worth it because you don’t get the good without the bad.”
“But if they only give you bad…”
“No one gives you only bad.”
It was quite funny to see how his face scrunched. “It looks like they ignored you.”
When he gave you that look, when he spoke that way, it always translated to your old friend group he'd never met but would always hate.
“I still had people around. Even if they were shitty, I got to spend time with them and do fun things with them, even if we barely interacted. And there were some times that were good. Some nice memories.”
It didn’t feel right to defend them in his presence; in fact, it felt like treason.
“Don’t give them a pass.”
He brought this defensiveness out of you without fail. “Don’t lecture me on what I’ve done to get by.”
“Isn’t that what you do to me?”
“I’m not hurting anyone in the process.”
He tipped his head back. “I’m allocating.”
“It should’ve been done a decade ago.” You adjusted like you were about to get up, but he reached out and touched your wrist.
“You confuse me.”
You eased back into the seat after a moment of glaring at his hand, which he promptly dropped. “I hate that you make me confused.”
“Me too.”
That earnestness again. It would be the death of you.
A swell of emotion swirled the boulder in your gut. “So are you leaving in the morning or what?”
Seeing if he’d go. You were pushing him. “I don’t want to leave like this.”
“Yeah, well.” You felt like you could explode. “I don’t know how else to be with you.”
Walter chirped, reminding you that other people were in the home. Not the first time you’ve been grateful your parents were heavy sleepers and far from the most embarrassing thing they might’ve overheard, but strangely the most intimate.
He made you weird. Usually, you’d fall onto your back, showing your belly like a big dog. Shying away from any opportunity for conflict, avoiding anything that would bring you into the center. You had only ever done the opposite with him. It wasn’t one thing, either. You needed him here and you needed him gone.
Thoughts scattered on top and around each other. Why did his dislike of you create an insatiable drive to prove him wrong? Why couldn’t you accept when he was nice to you? Wasn’t that victory?
Your gaze flashed toward him. What was it about this man that scared you more than anyone else?
“Is it really just the money?”
Lost in your thoughts, you jolted back to the conversation with a deep breath. It immediately illuminated that it was, in fact, not at all about the money, but ruminating on your fears was beside the point.
“The fact you say just is the problem. It’s life-saving shit! And you’d rather punch people all night than use your mountain of wealth.”
You stared at him, analyzing every little line on his face and shape of his silhouette for signals. That you were too much. That he wanted away. But you couldn’t make yourself stop poking, even when he had every right to storm out and never come back.
“It’s not just punching people all night.”
There he was. Kicking back. The slight edge. Anxiety fluttered like butterflies. You didn’t think you’d ever felt more desperate for him to love you.
“I know that, but you rely more on violence to keep people in check than things that could make a bigger difference.”
That was the crux of it; he never seemed to do a true cost-benefit analysis. A city with Bruce Wayne, Philanthropist would be far better off. The money ached to be used—why couldn’t he see that?
“I used to be more aggressive. Wanted to scare people.”
“You expect me to care that you’re less violent now?” An edge spilt into your voice. “I’ve seen some videos of you fighting. It’s not very clear, and it’s fucking confusing because you’re competent, I’ll give you that, but you’re angry and bitter, and have so much fucking power to get away with anything you want.”
He startled like you’d pushed him. “Do you think I’ll hurt you? I would never—”
“What happens if you stop and no longer have an outlet for that anger inside you? What happens to any woman you’re around?”
The hurt and confusion on Bruce’s face was palpable. You wrung your hands together in your lap and continued.
“You have no problem annihilating anyone you don’t agree with.”
His voice hollowed. “I only do that to people who are hurting people. Killing people.”
“What happens if I get on your bad side? What would you do if I was hurting people?” Nerves wore at you. “If you found out I’d hurt someone. Killed someone. Would you break my nose? Worse?”
It took him a few seconds to register what you were insinuating. “You wouldn’t though,”
“Answer.”
“I wouldn’t.” Straightforward. Resolute. He noticed you didn’t relax.
“Even if I fought back?”
You were nervous; testing your safety.
“I wouldn’t. Never. I promise.”
“Then why do you do it to anyone?”
The mere thought of abandoning Batman, and never engaging in physical pursuit, made him feel restless. Was it to channel his anger?
He felt warm. Too warm.
Your sigh came from the bottom of your chest. “You’re looking at me like I’m a Pacifist, I’m not. Look at that guy from City Hall who harassed me. I’d do it again.”
The biggest reason he hated these conversations was that your poking actually poked through. It popped bubbles of things he never wanted to think about, let alone have reflected back to him astutely, spoken like it was right there the whole time.
“It just scares me. It’s always put me on edge about you, all of it together. But everything else has been so fucking huge lately that I’ve forgotten about it.”
Discombobulated. The empty room felt tight and cramped, and the soft tickle of Walter’s tail against your shin sent your pulse rocketing as if the barrel of a gun, cool and sleek and heavy, had just ghosted against it.
“I didn’t follow you after graduation because I was terrified that you could do anything to me in that alley, ruin my life, and completely get away with it.”
Bruce’s mouth went dry. It was too easy to remember how thoughtlessly he’d snapped at you when all you were was afraid of someone you had every right to be wary of.
“And you act like you’re incapable of doing anything like that, which is great, and also terrifying, because it seems like you’re oblivious to how you come off. Even if you’re not trying to. Just, your status, your family, Batman. How abrasive you can be. Withdrawn.”
Hastily, you wiped your eyes with the back of your hand.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was rough. “I don’t mean to be like this. I’m sorry you’ve been afraid of me.”
“I don’t even know what I'm trying to say.” Your voice cracked, just a little, splitting off the tension in your body like a charged spring. “I know some people deserve it. I know throwing someone in jail isn’t going to help much either. I just wish you’d look at the other ways you can help more. I know I’ve said this a billion times,”
Because he hadn’t wanted to listen. He kept you in these loops. He saw that now.
“But I know some of them are out there at night because they don’t have anywhere else to go, anything else to do, and crime would go down if you invested in parts of the city that actually care. That actually help.”
He steeled himself when you tensed. He was starting to know you—how you moved.
“All of what you do feels personal. I think if you stopped blaming yourself for their deaths then the rage and guilt would stop fueling you so horribly.”
Horribly was the word that bounced around his brain. With only the smallest tinge of humor, he was reminded of Alfred. How he would probably clap and dance around the kitchen if he knew the conversations that you put him through.
No. Not put him through. That you spoke, and that he chose to stay around for. His default was to dismiss, but he wouldn’t do that with you anymore.
You caught his eye when you looked up. Even when you ripped into the fabric of how he chose to go about his life, he was here. Why wasn’t he more mad at you?
“I know you didn’t make this money, you got handed it.” If you were going to be the one talking about nuance, the least you could do was provide some yourself. “And I know you got it under the worst circumstances.”
“I’m on your side. I want you to know I care. I’m trying… I’ll do better with their money.”
“Your money. They aren’t here anymore, this is you. It’s your life and what you choose to do with it.” Were you trying to piss him off? Surely there was a nicer way to say that.
Though every anxious muscle on your body told you to back down, make yourself palatable, be polite, Y/n, you shoved the last bit out before you swallowed it. What the hell did you have to lose?
“Not using, not touching what once was theirs isn’t preservation. It isn’t honoring them to keep moving like a ghost.”
Bruce deflated. Slices of cold burned across your heart.
“I know that’s harsh,”
”No, you’re right. It’s my money now. Has been. You’re just being honest.”
Pain draped over him like a familiar blanket. “I can see you drifting away.”
“I’m not gonna run.”
Silence permeated the space like an avalanche. You weren’t expressing yourself like you meant to, not at all, everything coming out fuzzy ever since he’d started ignoring you in the morning.
You took a breath.
“That’s what’s been so confusing for me. On paper you’re everything I hate, everything I’m scared of. But I know you’re good. And kind. And when I actually care to look for it I can see the heart in everything you do. Even running.”
When you looked at him when he was like this, all far away and declawed, you could see the boy underneath it all. Underneath the mountain of publicity and reputation that preceded him.
“I think the reason I’m so desperate to keep… meddling… is that I know you’re good. I know you aren’t like those losers at the meetings. I feel it right now. My body just fucking relaxes the more I get to know you.”
God, when those eyes met yours… you pressed on.
“And it doesn’t. Because you’re self-destructive and that also scares me. I’m so angry about you not using your power because I know you would use it for good.”
A broken record of I knows spilling out like rain.
“I know you can and would do more. I know how smart you are, how warm you can be, and with the path you’re on I’m worried that warmth is gonna burn out. That you won’t be here anymore for anyone to feel it.”
His heart turned to mush. Your words hung there. Like a painting that was too pretty to be touched.
Feeling awkward, you grabbed your pint and wiped the sweat off the cardboard with the front of your shirt. “You don’t have to respond, I’m just monologuing.”
“I like when you talk. It demystifies you.”
Bruce watched in mild horror as you grew withdrawn.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“I just really want to believe you. But I’m not a very good radar for judging that.”
And if I believe you, you’ll ruin me was on the tip of your tongue. So acutely aware that if you let your guard down, then you wouldn’t just be hurt, you’d be annihilated. Especially from him.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel bad about yourself.”
“I’m sitting here harassing you,”
“You don’t harass me, you just don’t accept bullshit.”
This was the strangest argument you’d ever been in. Talking around everything and nothing, about everything you ever had and hadn’t said. It was dizzying.
“I don’t feel like I deserve to hear that after what I did.”
“You tried to help me. You succeeded.”
“I don’t know why you aren’t more angry. It was only a few hours that you were gone.” Your voice got endlessly quieter. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
For a while, he’d felt the same. Until he thought to call you to tell you about it and had to face the reality that you were the subject and that if he didn’t come back, he’d never get to hear your voice again. Almost a half-second later he’d tipped the airport staff for unpaid wages and turned the car around.
“All this time, I could feel there was something you weren’t telling me.” Too many interactions to name came to mind. “To know it was this was relieving once the adrenaline wore off.”
“I tried to tell you about that night and you didn’t let me.”
“I thought you meant reliving it. Telling me what you saw to get it out of your head. I didn’t want you to go through that again.”
Oh.
“Because every time I recounted the night they died, the nightmares would be worse.”
Absolutely petrifying to believe him, but you almost had no other choice. Hanging off a ledge as the waves lapped at you, loosening your grip. “You can be sweet, Bruce.”
He bit his cheek.
“I think that’s why it stings so much when you try not to be.”
He didn’t really believe that, but there was a well inside him that threatened to flood when you said such things.
“I know I’ve given you anything but—I mean, literally calling into question everything you do with your life—but you deserve peace. I mean that.”
Not entirely wanting to let him off the hook, you added, “Well, you deserve it after allocating more.”
“I’ve been… pushing off the allocating,” he admitted, feeling emboldened by your candor. “I’ll give funding ideas to Alfred by Friday afternoon.”
He paused. “And don’t talk about yourself that way. Please.”
You swerved his latter addition. “What funding ideas?”
“Arkham. I’ll find some charities that house people.”
“I could also do that.” You grabbed the ice cream and drummed your fingers against the cardboard. “I wouldn’t mind the outreach experience. I really liked being able to help.”
“If you’re comfortable with that.”
“I want to.”
He wasn’t quite feeling it, had no idea if it would land, but wanted to lighten the mood. “You want to get put on my credit card?”
Your mouth pulled into the slightest smile and he knew he’d made the right decision. “No.”
“I could.”
You snorted. “Not worried I’m gonna run away with everything?”
“I don’t have everything in one account.”
“Smart.”
Now that the future was firming up to something he couldn’t avoid, that fear came back boiling.
“We have to talk about how to keep you safe. If you want to be on the ground, I don’t know yet if Oz is tracking you. I don’t know how much of everything is a coincidence.”
“You could come with me?” A hard line appeared between your brows. “But if we were separated, we could hit two things at once. You could keep looking into the journalism stuff and I could do outreach.”
He died at the notion of you being anywhere in the city without him. “I wouldn’t be able to focus without knowing you’re safe.”
It was sweet that he cared, if slightly suffocating. “Even if something did happen, it wouldn’t be your fault. It’s my choice to stay, my choice to do this.”
“But if I let you, I’m complicit.”
“I’m going to do stuff like this regardless. I’m safer if you help me.”
Your ears stuck on the let, and you added, “And no, controlling me isn’t the answer to saving me from a potential outcome.”
When it came to you, he didn’t think you realized how weak he was.
“What happened with your job at the Gazette?”
“Technically I did my duties: get a damn interview with you. I might be able to report on the election, but I have no idea.” You abandoned your ice cream for what looked like the final time, moving it to the side table by the couch.
Maybe he could help you. Even if it felt like throwing you into an alligator pit.
“I feel like most people there don’t consider me part of the press anymore. Just think that I’m your girlfriend.”
He didn’t think he’d ever get used to you saying that. “Might make you safer. If people don’t think you’re reporting.”
“I could make an anonymous account. Report on some of the happenings. You could do some fancy stuff on your end and make it untraceable.”
“Not sure that’s how it works.”
“Then it keeps me safe with you, seen as an airhead girlfriend. No threat.”
“You deserve to be taken seriously. I’ll help you.”
Sometimes when you were with him, it was a fiery dark pit you never knew if you’d come out of. Other times, like this, felt like you were frolicking in a meadow. He took you more seriously than you ever took yourself, not even allowing a self-flagellating joke to fly. “Okay.”
“Don’t worry about the paparazzi. What they say, what people at the meetings do. I’ll keep track of Oz and the others. I’ll make sure you’re safe through the election.”
You believed him. You really fucking believed him, and covered the overwhelm with a bright quip.
“Bruce Wayne letting me stay and allocating?”
You could’ve sworn that a tinge of pink clouded his cheeks, but you couldn’t be sure in the low light.
He didn’t think this was a particularly wondrous conversation, yet you acted like he’d painted the sky. Was he that cold that the simple act of not being deplorably rude was the highlight of your day? Jesus.
How simple would it be to make you astronomically happy? Learning your favorite foods, favorite songs, little habits; all the eccentric things you only know by loving someone. Until he inevitably hurt you. Until something terrible happened.
But if it was really all you’d ever wanted?
“And the Crane stuff.”
You drew him out of his reverie.
“I really didn’t tell him anything specific. Just that everything was fine, and you seemed to have no side effects. Except when I called him with that panic attack on Wednesday—I thought you were having a reaction to something. I needed to make sure you didn’t have to go to the hospital.”
Bruce’s ability to navigate this topic without any sort of large reaction, ignoring if you’d said any of this five hours ago he would’ve lost his mind, was staggering. He was being respectful, and thoughtful, and vulnerable. But it didn’t sit right. It made you fidgety.
It felt like something was fundamentally wrong with you.
“And I’m sorry about lying about that when you had to go through it.”
He couldn’t possibly be okay with it. Not about something you’d spent nights sobbing into your pillow over. You struggled not to gawk at him as you stumbled through another apology.
“It must’ve felt like a slap in the face. I never, ever put that together about your parents, but I should’ve. I’m sorry.”
You tucked a piece of hair that was unwieldy behind your ear and wrestled with words to say next. Catapulted them off with a big sigh.
“You’re right to be angry with me and to not trust me, even if it helped. I did lie, even if it was for a reason I thought was justified. And I know it’s probably not fun to hear that in the same situation I’d do it again.”
“I got in my own way. You saved my life.”
You shook your head, a stress headache piercing your temples. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t think I had a choice, but you can be mad at me.”
“I’m not.”
“You should be.”
Once again, the dreadful feeling of resenting him when he was considerate left you tight and antsy.
“I believe you. I trust you.” He placed his hand on your knee and scattered lightning through your bones. “So much it scares me.”
The humdrum backdrop of your house emphasized the beauty of him. While it was obvious why the whitemalebillionaire was thirsted after everywhere he went, it struck you that he might’ve been deserving of it. Almost deserving of more, which sent you into the stratosphere it was so far beyond what you ever thought you’d feel about him.
You squeezed his hand, deja vu tucking into the palm of it the memory of watching shows at your apartment. How he made you feel heard for the first time in your life. “I don’t take your trust lightly. I won’t lie again.”
In the haze of the memory and his reciprocal squeeze, you recalled a six pack of beer your dad brought in.
Ignoring how it might’ve been a bandaid, or avoidant of the eyes that locked to yours and the gallop of your pulse, you gestured to the kitchen. “Ever had cheap beer?”
Walter, once again, was wildly persistent in his pursuit of constant attention. As soon as he saw the both of you were up and mobile, it never occurred to him that the hubbub couldn’t have been about him.
He took the opportunity while the both of you sipped on your drinks to headbutt and meow at Bruce until he picked up the laser, then the string toy, and chased him around the living room. Briefly, Walter’d wanted you to wield something, but swiftly tired of you and moved back to Bruce.
Both of you being lightweights, you’d begun to float two-thirds into the beer, and Bruce was only halfway through when you noticed a wobble in his step. It was definitely safety concerns that made you lead him to the backyard and not his unbearably domestic behavior threatening a mass-release of oxytocin.
Also, his cheeks were so flushed in the kitchen light you thought the breeze would feel nice on his skin.
“Does he have a leash or something?” Bruce shut the door with extreme diligence, eyes wide to make sure Walter didn’t get clipped.
After explaining to him a harrowing experience of trying a leash only for him to nearly kill himself trying to escape it ‘by any means necessary, and I mean any means’, you told him it was okay to let Walter down on occasion. As the shiny new toy, Bruce would exhaust himself otherwise.
“You need to stop being so sacrificial. Like humoring me with the cheapest beer ever created.”
He promptly downed the rest and set his bottle down in front of the swing. A small look of triumph wore him.
It must’ve been a few minutes of swaying in the breeze, because it was enough time for the giddy laughs of seeing Bruce lunge around your living room to transform into insecurity.
A few leaves wet from the garden sprinkler shined under the moon. Its distraction was momentary. Everything good you got with Bruce was hard won. Birthed from fateful circumstance and forced proximity, not by choice.
“What if anyone else was as persistent as me? You’d be sitting here with them in her hometown?”
“Would you be sitting here with someone else you found out? Just because you’d found them out?”
You took the last gulp of your beer. “Fair point.”
Not realizing how pathetic it sounded until it rolled off your tongue, you blathered on about “But you’re you, you know. You’re special.”
To which he didn’t waste a single beat saying: “You are, too.”
You snuck a look at him.
No matter if it was beginning to be routine for him or not, it was still such a foreign concept to have someone so willing to go to bat for you that it struck like a gong every time.
“I appreciate what you said about me.” A slight huskiness rounded out his voice. It made you notice the slight stubble on his cheeks overshadowed by the piercing pale blue of his eyes. “I know I don’t talk a lot. But I feel it, and it means a lot.”
“I still don’t know why you’re here,” you laughed in a whisper, embarrassed to feel this way and more embarrassed to speak it. “Thanking me for berating you.”
“I hate the way you talk about yourself.”
So plainly and sternly said, all you could do was look at him.
“I’m here because I care about you.”
You gripped the edge of the swing until your knuckles burned. He disintegrated your convictions, carving his initials into your skin without trying. He’d said that before. Time and time again.
“There’s… something that happens when you talk to me.” The alcohol reduced your filter to next to nothing, and you watched him scan your face, looking increasingly perplexed as you found the words.
“It’s like the whole world stops and you’re the only thing that matters. Like it stops and speeds up. I don’t know what to do with it, but I know I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
A swatch of hair fell into his eyes, and you tried to tuck it behind his ear to no avail. It brought a soft grin to your lips, his the same. The air squeezed out of you, leaving you heady and staticky.
Any residual anger left the moment he saw you through the screen door, but your ability to knock everything out of him but adoration was utterly ridiculous. Was this what love felt like? Painting over every decision, all the bite taken out of their wrongdoings and faults just because it was them?
His voice quivered. “I’m sorry it can’t work.”
He might’ve meant that more than anything he’d ever said.
“It doesn’t need to. I just like being in your orbit.”
I just like being in your orbit. His heart slipped further down his sleeve. “You deserve someone better.”
Someone that has the guts to love you how you want. Had he really not evolved since ‘more people means more funerals’?
You looked away. “Don’t put yourself down.”
“I mean it.” His world narrowed to just you two and the words sitting unsaid. “You deserve to be loved without hesitation.”
“I get why you hesitate.” You slumped against the side of the swing. “I just hope that someday it happens for you, you know?”
You smiled at the thought. It’d be a nice six weeks, if either of you could stop worrying about the other. A pleasant six weeks, sharing the space as friends, and maybe he’d warm to the idea of companionship after the house was left empty and you were back here.
His gentleness would win over, it always would. Maybe in a decade, maybe two, when his body grew too broken to continue this martyred crusade, he’d come home to someone, sink into a couch together, and everything would be right. If you were lucky, he’d even remember this conversation like a waning street lamp on an old, abandoned street. You’d see him in some tabloid, a collage of nuptials and abode that would color the rest of his life, and these hellish months of persistence would feel worth it. It could be the gateway drug, the embers never quite burning out.
“I have the same hopes I had on Tuesday, believe it or not.” Giggling to yourself, you rapped the rusting metal with your chipped nails. Less than a week ago felt like a fucking year. “I hope you realize it doesn’t have to be bad. That people are worth it, too, if you love ‘em enough.”
Self-conscious of your thoughts loosening, you nudged him in the arm. “But get better at making pancakes before then.”
“I’ll work on that.”
“One day.” You smirked. “With someone you find at some gala.”
Another laugh rolled out of you. He adored the sound, could think of a few ridiculous jokes fumbling around his intoxicated thoughts to keep them coming, but you seemed engrossed in some psychic account of his future.
“Why a gala?”
“You’re like, a prince. Fuckin’ Cinderella story.”
Talking so off the cuff, he could imagine you wearing a suit in the corner of City Hall, a cigar hanging from your mouth. Getting to know you and all your eccentricities was fun. He added this to the index: Tipsy Y/n.
“Find a lady in some gown. Fly her out to Cabo or something. Get a ring that’s absolutely enormous. She’ll be the daughter of some trust fund guy or some big-time movie director.”
The humor left the second he realized you and him had very different reasons why you couldn’t work. The mosaic of you did a hard shift. “Y/n.”
Your lashes fluttered when he said your name, and you let out a sigh and waved your hand.
“No, I’m not judging. It’ll be great.”
“I don’t… want that.”
“Well, whatever you want then.”
“I can’t have anyone—but if I could, it would be you.”
It hit you like a physical strike, but you hoped it didn’t show.
You didn’t react much but for a sad smile. Grabbed his arm, gave a little squeeze. “You’re so nice, man.”
He was a deflating balloon with each passing syllable.
“But you don’t have to say things like that to make me feel better. Friends, I’m totallyyy okay with that.”
He felt all the tension in his chest, his stomach, his face, his shoulders; prickling heat spiked his skin where you’d touched.
“I mean it. It’s you.”
“I think we’re both a liiiiittle drunk.”
Bruce got chills as he was reminded of how you told him that sometimes you thought he was above you. How you trusted him for everything besides yourself.
“You really think you don’t deserve me?”
“Look,” you took one tight breath before peering at him through your lashes, tone lowering to serious. “I get it. You have a little crush. Nothing crazy.”
He breathed through a straw. Was it not as real to you? Did you think his feelings weren’t… it didn’t make sense.
His gears turned. The soup of your loneliness, your consistent devaluing of self, always talking about him being with someone else. Your choice of phrasing: wanting him to want to stay. Hadn’t he said he liked you? Hadn’t he shown it? Didn’t your body react like his did when you leaned close?
You slapped your hands on your thighs. “Think I might head to bed. Are you safe for tonight? I know today was a lot.”
“I am.”
You held out your hand for a sloppy high-five which he awkwardly took, which made you want to laugh, which kind of made you want to cry, and you quickly found yourself back in bed.
The millisecond your head hit the pillow, you descended towards dreamland. In a haze, you grabbed your phone and toyed around with it, sliding through contacts until you reached Dr. Crane.
A soft blue glow bathed your pillow as you deliberated.
Delete?
Your eyes fluttered shut, your hand slipping. Delete.
“Everything alright?”
You gasped awake in bed, scrambling for the ant-sized sound coming from the side of your pillow. Confused, you put the phone to your ear. “Hello?”
“Is Bruce in trouble?”
Crane. Buttdial.
You laughed at the mistake, only barely awake enough to slurry words out as the little bit of alcohol put you right to sleep. “Everything’s good. I don’t need to call you anymore. Byeee forever.”
The BEEP BEEP BEEP of an ended call. You smiled onto your side and promptly crashed.
“Do you need a pillow?”
Bruce awoke with a startle to see you standing in the hallway entrance. He propped up on an elbow, shaking away the hair that fell in his face. “I’m okay.”
You gasped so loud he was shocked your parents didn’t wake up. “Oh my god I forgot to give you a blanket all this time too! I’m so sorry!”
Disoriented and sweaty, he tried to sit up but fell back. His limbs felt like lead, a dull headache throbbing at the base of his skull. “It’s alright, really.”
“No, it’s not.”
Fretful, you disappeared in a jiffy, rummaging sounds echoing from the back of the house. He clicked his phone on, thankfully finding a charger he’d plugged it into before Walter crawled onto his chest and he passed out. It’d been three hours.
You re-emerged with a blanket slung over your shoulder and a pillow locked in your elbow, studiously making your way to where he laid. Fanning the blanket over him, he felt a rush of heat. “Thanks. Was this in the dryer?”
“No.” You tucked the pillow under his head and walked toward the hall, now steady on your feet.
“Goodnight!”
“Night.”
The sound of your door shutting made his head hit the pillow.
Walter stretched from the far arm of the couch and moseyed over, tail flicking. Back for another sleep shift. Bruce pulled the blankets up over his shoulders to flatten it for him, and got a rush of the remnants of your perfume. His brain worked overtime to put two and two together.
He slipped off the couch before Walter got too comfortable, and engaged in a very lackluster game of tug of war with his paw before the cat got bored. He hauled the gear onto his shoulder and wandered to your room, knuckles rapping on the wood.
No answer.
Too worried you’d aspirated on your vomit in the few minutes that passed, he peeked in after knocking again. He found you asleep in the fetal position on a bare bed. “Hey,”
You rubbed your eyes and sat to attention. “Do you need something?”
The blinds were still open, as was the window. Y/n… you would’ve frozen all night.
“You do.” He tossed the pile on the foot of your bed. You grabbed it in one big ball and threw it at him. He barely caught it before it hit the floor.
“It’s yours. You need stuff and I get too hot anyway.”
“I can find something,” he fibbed, and you interrupted.
“I couldn’t find anything anywhere. Take them.”
“I’m leaving them here.”
He tossed them back.
You worried your lip until you scooted over. “Sleep with me, then. We can share it.”
Were you still inebriated?
Bruce hesitated, but you scooted over and spread out the blanket, flopping it out and moving the pillow to be perfectly halved. It’d been hours, though, and only one drink.
His delay made you sit up. “Oh, no this—it’s platonic. I didn’t mean to suggest anything.
He crossed the room with tentative strides, slowly slipping into bed beside you. “I know.”
Okay. Maybe you were just overthinking things.
The bed was a much tighter squeeze than you even anticipated; knowing how big he was, knowing how small the twin bed already felt while you laid on it alone. You didn’t mind that there was no way to sleep without your bodies touching, and you were far too tired to feel anything but exhaustion no matter what, but you checked in around it with him.
He said it was alright, and redirected the question to you. You felt his shoulders relax when you responded the same, his arm draping over you as he fought to get comfortable. How hilarious—probably hasn’t had a bed below a king his entire life.
Bruce’s body melted into the mattress like it was a cloud. The warmth of your back pressed to his chest was a soothing weight lulling him to slumber, only kept up by wanting you to fall asleep first. He didn’t know why. It just felt right to wait.
Your breathing slowed almost immediately, rendering his eyelids heavy. The room’s cozy size, being enveloped in the smell of you, it was sensory heaven. He was surprised he didn’t outwardly startle when you spoke.
You sounded guarded. “Sorry for making you sleep in this tiny bed. I really tried to find an extra blanket. Don’t know where they went.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I know if we didn’t share it, one of us would be up all night guilty. And warm.”
“Probably right.” The sound of your sleepy voice made a faint laugh rumble through him.
You were muffled by the pillow. “Are you comfortable laying like this? Want me to move?”
Move where? he thought, noting the edge of your knee falling off the bedside. “However you’re comfortable, I’m happy.”
And so you flipped over and nuzzled your head into his shoulder. Your arm remained stiff at your side, calling to mind he hadn’t asked before he rested his arm on you. He lifted it off, but not without your objection.
“That’s okay. I know you don’t have a lot of room.”
“You don’t either.”
You didn’t respond, your breathing relaxing so quickly Bruce worried if you were alright.
It was the same way when you’d come home from the club. At the time he figured it a side effect of the drug; now he wondered if you always slept like this, or if you were even a little bit as peaceful as he was laying here with you.
He never got used to being capable of comforting. When you snuggled into his chest like it was second nature, when someone clung to him on patrol.
He knew why he couldn’t have you. He knew why like the back of his hand, like his name in Alfred’s voice, like the smell of his mother’s cooking.
Still, the ever-present thought refused to heed it: Why was he running from this?
Drizzles of rain speckled your window, a low swish of nearby trees moving with the wind. Did it rain as much here as in Gotham? Did you like the rain? Did you hate it?
He wanted to know everything about you.
With the last bit of his attention, his gaze floated around the room until it stuck on your desk. The frame of the group photo struck a slit of moonlight.
Bruce pulled you closer and rested his head on yours, a glare settling on his face. Unlike them, he actually gave a shit. They were cruel, heartless people who only served their own interests.
He moved his arm to flip his hot hair off his neck, and paused when he accidentally knocked your wrist, feeling your breathing keep its full, slow tempo. Wait.
Squinting in the dark, he noticed you didn’t have the bracelet on your wrist, nor did it sit on the desk. Did you lose it? He didn’t remember it on you after he came back, either.
Oh.
His indignation at your ex-friends relaxed when the irony set in. What did it matter if he cared if he wouldn’t show it? Who was he to judge cruelty when all you’d ever wanted was an apple, and he held one in his hands, intentionally out of reach? Was that really sparing you?
No bile rose in his throat, no dizzying, overwhelming emotion to run from. Just a pervasive, constant thunder undercutting every rationalization he gave his continued hesitance: why wasn’t he angry with you, and why didn’t he think he ever could be again?
Why did nothing else matter and the hole in his heart disappear when he held you like this? And why the hell did he know exactly what this was, but couldn’t bring himself to say it?
You rustled, nuzzling your head deeper into the crook of his neck like he was something warm and wonderful.
He couldn’t let anything happen to you? Even nights like these?
Even better?
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