[ Papers shift, and Bruce skids back, shoulderblades to the flat of a wall. Gwen's hypothetical threat to his wellbeing is earned; he's not worried about it. Insteadー
ー"A decent night", he reads, and rereads. ]
Sorry to hear that. Especially since your hotel's known for updating their mattresses regularly.
[ Harmless banter, "sorry for your lack of sleep". Implicit, though, is his assumption that she should've been sleeping on those ridiculously-luxe mattresses, which is a weird as fuck thing to point out? Maybe? What do normal people talk about when they're not trying to surreptitiously gather intel about them, but in a well-meaning way?
(It's not that he doesn't care; he does. People are allowed to exist beyond his notice, beyond the realm of his understanding, because god forbid he deny anyone their secrecy, their masks. Butー
ーhe thinks of water and her pale limbs, her music, her bare-boned life history. How much of Gwen's life is hers, and not a footnote for something, someone else?) ]
you know, it's not as if bruce has thus far given the impression of someone with a lot of social deftness. frankly, he hasn't given the impression of a guy who wants to spend a lot of time texting anyone back and forth; he gives the impression of someone who would like to communicate primarily in pained expressions or through his butler. he just doesn't seem like someone who googles hotel reviews in order to make smalltalk, and he certainly doesn't seem like someone who makes enough smalltalk with anyone else for it to just come up.
people have weird interests. maybe he stayed here, once, and someone enthusiastically pitched the quality of the mattresses and their regular replacement to him, and that nugget of information just sat in the back of his head pointlessly until it seemed, this very moment, relevant to the conversation at hand. and maybe there's absolutely nothing more to it than that. and maybe it'd be really fucking paranoid to think that there were,
someone started a rumour that she was dead, hours after she had been sleeping in her bathtub. )
Yeah, they were really nice beds.
(someone was in that room. that is not paranoia, she's certain, that's—
someone thought she was dead. it sinks in as she worries these thoughts between her hands, that the likelihood of someone prank calling the cops is not that high in this very specific instance, that wherever that rumour originated, it probably wasn't a laugh.
suppose then that it isn't the worst thing, that whoever it was tried to get something done about it. but still—
she feels exposed in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact she'd been naked. )
The rental now is fine. I've been thinking of getting something more permanent here, anyway.
[ The funny thing is that Bruce does have an arsenal of insanely specific facts about every fucking establishment in the entirety of Gotham, from where certain motels get their linens to the specific imported sugar that the downtown coffee shop uses for their donuts' glaze. Bruce's esoteric knowledge of his city borders on paranoia, a child's fear of not understanding everything about the one thing that they think, erroneously, that they have under their control; it has never been about cultivating topics of smalltalk, or ways to relate to people.
Gwen is correct. Bruce is not the type.
He is also not the type to text, which is mostly his undoing, here. Very difficult to read the patterns of discomfort or suspicion over the dispassionate relay of words on a screen. No inflections, no body language to make him course correct. Insomnia and the mania that comes along for the ride have likely dulled his judgmentー he shouldn't have done any of these things, shouldn't have reached out. He never does. Why start now?
MEDICAL CONDITION? flutters by his side again, picked up on an errant breeze coming in through the thin sliver of his open study window. Outside, Gotham spreads like a nuclear spill: neon, pulsing, waterlogged.
He thinks of cello strings and his footsteps on tile. He almost doesn't respond. ]
The real estate market's in shambles. Now's as good a time as any to buy.
[ Literally no one wants to be here but the absolute shittiest the city has to offer. Apartment high-rises are selling for a fraction of their usual cost. Gwen is fucking crazy. (He's drawn to that, probably.) ]
( maybe there's no interesting reason why he doesn't get a reply. it's shadowing late into the night, there were delays between answers, who knows what's occupying her that made her set down her phone. a hundred and one things could have side-tracked her. by now, the news of her legal difficulties in gotham has certainly made it back to europe, which means any number of people could be checking in with concern that more urgently requires her attention to reassure—
maybe she's just not the kind of person who says, oh, by the way, I'm headed for bed, we'll pick this up later. all of those things could be true.
they don't pick it up later, but she's got a lot going on, and he has a lot to look into. it isn't even hard to find her; now's a great time to buy, if you don't mind literally everything about everything. increasingly as she nails down what needs to be in place for the wynne-york project she's able to hand off its component parts to the people who'll do the leg-work to make it happen, leaving her free to spend her time securing a realtor and ignoring GPD's calls.
two nights later, the bat signal hangs in the wrong part of the sky. the angle of it is off, and so is the floodlight at gordon's disposal; he checks. it sits dark and idle and above gotham the signal lights up the overcast nightsky anyway, orienting back to a rooftop. one of those penthouses that are up for a pittance in comparison to what they were worth a few years ago, the entire top two floors of a high-rise building and private use of the roof as well with hanging gardens, a pool, even a helipad. gwenaëlle had viewed it earlier in the day, a little spontaneous but who's going to protest the interest or the speed.
it hadn't been difficult, smiling, to see the agent drop the keys into her hand at the end of the tour. she'd locked up as they left, memorised the codes, made a note of which areas were staffed with security. it's a promising prospect, actually, she's seriously considering making the purchase. the ease with which she, specifically, moves through the building like a hot knife isn't in and of itself a worry to her, not when the way she does that is so specific, but it does merit taking some extra precautions in the future for the people whose abilities might also be. interestingly specific.
gwenaëlle sits by the pool, her high heels on the ground next to her, her feet in the water. she lights a cigarette, figuring she has absolutely no idea how long it typically takes this guy to answer his hails and she's only assuming he'll be able to locate the position of where this light seems to be coming from—
it orients to her precise location, but there's no obvious source to find. just gwen, trailing her feet through the water, her purse beside her, smoke curling into the night air. )
[ Gwen makes assumptions; they only happen to be correct. The aforementioned encyclopedic knowledge of Gotham's minutiae means that the Bat triangulates the beacon to a specific highrise in the questionably "good" part of town, to the penthouse of an apartment lightly touched by gentrification and modernization. Vaguely, he entertains the notion of this being a trapー Riddler's quiet hiss still settled in his subconscious like silt, with the pitch of his name, Bruce Wayne, rendered corrosive and acerbic.
He wishes those memories, still fresh and raw, would make him second-guess.
(They don't.)
When the Bat appears, he's heralded by dust floating up from concrete to air, hovering through the diffuse angle of light that the beacon casts. A displacement that speaks to the passage of someoneー something. Squint, and Gwen should be able to make him out between two unlit deck chairs, a questionably-human inkblot.
He doesn't speak. (Bruce has a feeling that opening his mouth would blow whatever cover he may or may not possess; a musical ear is adept at identifying close cadences. Oh well.) Instead, the Bat tips his chin towards the streak of yellow bisecting the dark of the night sky, and inquires, without inquiring, what the hell this is about. ]
( miss wynne-york is slight in the first place — athletic but petite, looks like she might blow away in a strong breeze — and when she pulls her feet up out of the pool and stands, barefoot, she's all the slighter for not having the heels she is never otherwise without. she extinguishes her cigarette before she's all the way up, and lifts her hand up,
closes it into a fist and the signal winks out. she takes a breath, studying him, unsettled by his silence and not sure if that's the point of it or something else. she stops, just within her arm's reach of him, one eyebrow raised.
the outfit is a lot, in person. )
In some literature on the subject of nymphs,
( is almost certainly not how he expected this conversation to start, )
the men writing these books dutifully record that they are, as a species, known for killing men who watch them bathe.
( gwen jabs him in the chest with her finger. she misjudges both her hand and his armor, very slightly, but she's working herself up to the kind of mood where jolting her joints harder than she expected to really doesn't make a blind bit of difference— )
It is my personally held belief that this reflects less on my kind and more on the fact that men have been fucking perverts since the dawn of mankind and women of every species have always known they were going to have to deal with that themselves. It's interesting to me, the gulf between what is seen and what is understood.
I think you were in my bathroom earlier this week. I would like to know why. We may be revisiting point one in this conversation.
[ Is it the bat ears? It's probably the bat ears. A guy in kevlar is imposing, but a guy with two little protrusions on his head is just unnervingly weirdー surely he's not looking to be taken seriously with those nubs growing from his mask.
And yet.
He doesn't move. Doesn't flinch, either, even when the floodlights go off and he's left, chillingly, to contend with nymphs and the possibility that he's in over his head, whichー well. He is, a majority of the time. Even with preparation, even with two decades of self-training, he keeps finding himself stumbling over these outliers that he fails (fails, every fucking time) to anticipate. It makes him feel like a child again, heels of his polished dress shoes buried in a puddle, watching bodies fall.
Gwen jabs him like a gunshot. "My kind", she says, and his mind races with the impossible possibility that he is contending with someone who is
not human.
(water, the chill of her skin, her song stringing his nerves raw. context clues.)
His silence is less about upholding the mystique of a grown-ass man who masquerades as fuzzy winged vermin, and more about letting his synapses breathe. Instinct tells him he should keep his fucking mouth shut, to give away less than he already has, butー ]
Not to watch you bathe.
[ Answering her question, without actually saying anything. Implicit: "we don't need to revisit point one, as I had no idea you would be sleeping underwater in the first place. What the fuck is that about?"
His chin angles to the side; he's done this before. Some obvious averting of gaze, a comfort in tracing shadows instead of meeting expectations in eyes. It's only his posture that's different, more comfortable in his armor than his suit or civilians. Bruce Wayne wore his designers poorly, but Batman wears his ridiculous excuse for a costume with ludicrous dignity. ]
( from the narrowing of her eyes, gwenaëlle has maybe not immediately ruled out revisiting point one—oh, you're not a pervert, leather-furry?—but the look lingers too long for that to be all. the slight tilt of her head. the way she is listening to him, very fucking closely. )
Great,
( flatly, )
then you won't mind explaining what you were doing. I realize Gotham is really going through it at the moment, but I promise you philanthropy isn't always a fucking crime.
( would she have made the dig if she knew she were talking to thomas wayne's son?
—maybe. gwenaëlle isn't known for pulling her punches, especially not when she's annoyed. in his periphery, her eyes are larger and darker than they were a moment ago; the shape of her pupil odd, different, and then gone. ordinary. easy to have missed, when and if he refocuses on her. )
I intend to spend time in this city. If that's going to be a problem, I'd like to work it out ahead of time.
[ Bruce blinks, under his mask. An errant wind weaves through the space between them on this unnecessarily high rooftop, moving matter and particulate around them, leaving dust to glitter over the too-turquoise water of the lit and heated swimming pool to their right.
Silent, again. Gwen's forward propulsion and would-be aggression slips over the Bat, catching in the ink-black of his mental armor for a breath of a moment before sliding and pooling by his feet. He, after all, agrees with her: philanthropy is not always synonymous with mustache-twirling villains and their hairless pets, and she is owed, to some degree, an explanation for why a strange man in a bat costume would invade the privacy of her space.
It's too bad that he doesn't have a good excuse. (Never does.) Observe the vigilante in his natural habitat, chewing over unarticulated words before he can spit out the ones that taste the least unsavory.
Gloved hands flex and unflex, once, twice. ]
Organizing a fundraiser is a transient act of good, [ he finally manages. In the vague, oblong lighting of this isolated space, Gwen seems fuzzy and obscure; no less lovely for the way shadows cut across her features, asymmetrical and serrated, but unknowable. Impenetrable.
(He does not wonder what will happen if he surges forward and tips her balance towards the water's edge; even he doesn't have that particular death wish.) ]
You decided to stay here, in Gotham. [ Which is what Gwen just corroborated, and which is the root cause of his curiosity. He voices it: ] Why?
[ Like. Literally Why. In this day and age, a GoFundMe from the other side of the world can do just as much, soー
ーwhy? Who is she indebted to, or what's holding her attention? (If she's not human, then even more so: what could a nymph want from a city like this?) ]
( it's a sort of telling narrowing of her eyes as she studies him more closely— the familiar, the strange. the familiar in the strange, gwenaëlle hyper-attuned already, restless energy thrumming her nerves. she exudes a confidence she doesn't feel, an animal backed into a corner and coming out with her teeth bared.
he has no idea about her teeth. but she hasn't tested them, either— )
That's a great question.
( it's a distinct voice he asks it in. )
Here is the thing, you have invaded my privacy for apparently no reason except having no concept of what is and is not your fucking business, ruined a perfectly good hotel suite and tied me up in overly-anxious police officers who are more likely to shoot themselves in the dicks than do anything useful if I am threatened.
So I do not feel obligated to answer your questions until I'm satisfied with the answers to mine.
( probably she doesn't actually mean it when she says, )
If you want to make it even and get a straight answer without giving me anything for it, I should get to see you naked, too.
( which isn't to say she would stop him if he took her up on it. it's a joke! unless it works, in which case she's a strategic genius.
she is not a strategic genius, she's just pissed off. )
[ "You have invaded my privacy", Gwen says to him, and he stares at her with a blankness that says yes, I do weird things, can't you tell? A mindset he'll never quite ameliorate, even on the heels of his latest caper.
Batman is not a Good Person; neither is Bruce Wayne. "Virtuous" is not a trait listed in his frankly sparse list of positive attributes on his CV, which means that he, in fact, believes that he doesn't owe Gwen an explanation despite him wanting oneー
ーwhich is fucked, morally. Hm. Bruce, seeing Gwen's fangs out (metaphorically), considers his options. ]
I could show you my ankles.
[ He says, dryly. Humor! Very Victorian of him, to imply that uncovering a sliver of skin on his otherwise entirely covered body is the same as getting undressed. For an insane half-breath, it seems like he'll leave it at that, butー
ーwell. Off goes one glove, peeled like carbon snakeskin. There is a human hand underneath all that armor, and it flexes with bruised knuckles, a cut on the side of it bisecting the skin.
The same cut that Bruce had in the cafe, if Gwen noticed. ]
( it's all the small things, all at once. the voice. the way that he holds himself. the pointed hotel trivia and odd balance of distance and interest. why had she come to batman's attention? he's spending his nights pursuing criminals and he ends up in her bedroom, why, what had she done—
gwenaëlle seizes his hand between both of her own and studies it more intensely than really seems necessary. when she looks up, her eyes are
different.
bigger than they were before, and not only because they're open so wide. blue-black where they had been white, but only at the very edges; her slit-pupils blown out wide, dazzling as a prism, like stars. distracting. they'd be lovely, maybe, if she weren't narrowing them at him that way. when she speaks, there is a command in her voice that reaches past the part of him that decides what he does or does not do and bypasses it entirely— )
Take off your cowl.
( what, she's just going to ask the guy who clearly doesn't give a shit about answering her questions if he's bruce wayne?
[ Midnight, encased in the hollows of two eyes. Instinct grabs Bruce by the spine, tries to tug on nerves that will inspire him to look away, but it's too little too late: the command has already crawled past his tympanic membrane, slithered into his brain, made a nest in his hindbrain.
Take off your cowl.
He doesn't have an antivenom for this brand of compulsion. It spreads through him, noxious and affectionate; invisible arms wrapped around him from behind, whispering. Take off your cowl.Take off your cowl.
Fingers hook under the space where the mask segments under his chin. The wrongness of it all is nauseating, but the freefall anxiety isn't enoughー
ーthe cowl slips off. Under the armor of kevlar and carbon, Batman is just A Man.
He's Bruce Wayne. Sunken eyes, dark circles. The reveal makes him sick. ]
( gwenaëlle is capable of great subtlety — in this, if in few other things at all — capable of weaving her own emotions into song and spirit as if they belong to the heart that beats time to them. capable of winding her fingers through someone's heart like she's tangling them coaxingly in their hair; of making a command feel like a desire.
who wouldn't want to give her what she wants? how natural, for the want to be his own—
this, her eyes cold diamonds more unsettling for being set in the human-seeming of her face, is not that. it is not meant to be that. she shows her hand, deliberately, in forcing him to show his,
she doesn't think he'll see the equity for what she means it to be, or care much for it, but it matters to her. and even as he'd lifted his hands, she hadn't been one hundred percent certain what she'd find beneath it.
but there he is. )
Huh.
( she smudges the black around his eyes with her thumb, and tilts her head, studying him, stepping back out of easy reach of his hands as she relinquishes her grip upon him, physical and figurative. )
That makes sense. I didn't know what kind of fire I was playing with, did I. Then again, you thought everything you felt when I played for you was your own, so we were both in the dark.
( this is—
exposure, she thinks. truly. more than nakedness, which is the least of her own concerns. and she feels a little more at ease, rendering them both vulnerable if anyone has to be, which is fucked up but in a way she's already decided she's accepted about herself. a hum, just a sound without a pull, a placeholder for a thought, )
[ Oily eyeliner, listing on a pale face. Bruce-Bat-Wayne is both taller and smaller like this, unmasked in full regalia, black makeup pulled down from under his eye to the sharp knife of his cheekbone.
He cools from the molten heat of that proffered command; shame starts to corrode him from where his face is exposed, so at odds with the ironclad security of his costume. Bruce Wayne is a construct that people like the Riddler speak about with disdain, that he himself regards with distant contemptー it unnerves him, to be associated with that particular part of his identity at this time of night.
Even under the poor lighting of the rooftop, Gwen should be able to see how Bruce flinches at the word even, as if the double-edged sword has cut a fraction too deep this time. Dark eyes flitting to the side, venting discomfort. His hands furl into fists by his side, and bloom again with long fingers grasping at nothing in particular. ]
You didn't know, [ "what kind of fire she was playing with," ] and I knew less.
( her jaw works as she considers that, considers him— )
You can put it back on.
( implicit: if it makes him more comfortable. that she doesn't say that, out loud, is mostly because she wonders if he might dig his heels in against his own comfort if she were to lampshade it—resist the accommodation just to prove he doesn't need it. maybe he won't like the idea she gives him permission, either way, but
she got what she wanted. he can put it back on. the in-between of it is strange, like he's neither one nor the other, which is...familiar. that's the problem with bruce wayne, so far, his familiarity.
at length, )
I don't owe you an explanation, for the record, but equally you already fucking have one because I've consistently been informing you of everything I do in Gotham and why since we met. You can look up everything to do with—
( that's where she stops.
it clicks, in an instant: the foundation, the programmes, her father. there is information readily available at the fingertips of even someone with fewer resources than bruce wayne, if they're dedicated and interested. flick through all the getty water-marked professional event shots, read the financial transparency reports, the interviews. there is a wealth of information,
but not about her. increasingly, she's made sure of that; limited her footprint, her public profile. it exists, because it's unavoidable, but she's a private person and it isn't actually that difficult for her to maintain that privacy.
[ Right, on all accounts: even the hint of consideration towards his comfort curdles him. But the mask pulls back on, obscuring the half of him that might act as more common identifiers, even if it really does shit-all now: his jaw's too distinctive, his mouth is too Bruce Wayne.
But, reciprocally: Gwen's inwards-facing exasperation. Bruce, if he were pettier, might've smiled at her outburst, understanding it for what it is. Sometimes, it's the obfuscation that gives creatures like them away.
Doesn't it fucking suck, looking into a mirror? ]
Yeah.
[ He says, for "oh fuck's sake". Asshole. It's really too bad that he genuinely gets no satisfaction from this, and "yeah" winds up sounding more like "don't worry, I'm just as bugfuck nuts for relating".
His cape whips in the wind. Just to add more surrealism to the ever-growing pile. ]
Your fans gave me more insight on you than your own social media did.
( gwenaëlle is derailed from what might have been a one-sided argument with the stone-faced goblin on this rooftop with her by the insane shit coming out of his mouth, which. )
No, don't, we're—we will come back to that.
( even as she says it, will they? where is that going. does she want to fully understand what he just said in all its implications. quite probably not, actually. fans. what fans. irrationally, she blames whatever this is on wes—
especially unfair, because he's not exactly popular with most of the small community that makes up the corner of the internet that knows who she is and cares.
[ A pity and a shame that Gwen is not aware of the fanmixes that dedicated stans make for her. They are, as the children call them, Bops. Bruce might have listened to one or two on his motorcycle ride here, earpiece lodged under his stupid batmask, crooning directly into his brain.
(He hopes she doesn't come back to this topic.)
He also kind of wishes she didn't keep asking him this question, because he doesn't have a crystalline answer for it; not one she can hold up to the light and decipher, or glean anything beautiful and clear from. It's all a muddle to him, too, the subject of trailing people out of not just utility (what the fuck benefit is this doing him, besides opening up another, more gigantic can of elephant-sized worms)ー what does he say to satisfy her? Satisfy himself?
Refracted light from poolwater drawing mercurial patterns on his face: ]
I wanted to know [ slowly, as if the words don't slot right between his teeth ], if I could trust myself around you.
( he can probably tell that he's made a mistake almost immediately.
it's worse than the thing that her face just did when he said the words your fans — the only way to avoid coming back to that topic will be to never speak to her again, she will be a glass and a half into a bottle of red wine and emboldened by it, and her curiosity will be irresistible — because it the expression isn't twisting with displeasure or hostility, no. no, this is worse, because though her eyes narrow
the corner of her mouth twitches. she rocks back on her heels, her toes curling against the cold stone underneath them, head tipping to the side as she studies him in an entirely different way. oh, she thinks, and, )
Oh,
( out loud. gwenaëlle, who has trusted herself around bruce wayne zero percent since about thirty seconds after they met in person, closes the small distance between them — stands close enough to be aware of how she's breathing, and doesn't touch him. close enough that there is effort, precise, involved in not touching him. consciousness of the thing. one of her expertly shaped eyebrows rises. so does she, onto her toes. )
[ A breath passes like an agonizing eternity. Gotham blinks and stares around them, panoramic and indifferent, and it's the neons and oranges of the city lights that make Bruce feel just as exposed as the look in Gwen's eyes; voyeurs to his folly.
It occurs to him, always, that he hates being seen. What good is there, in being known? And how will it serve him, now, to understand that he trusts that Gwen will shove him backwards off of these however-many stories, if she had to?
Streetcars and dogs barking, in the near distance. Bruce remains the inertia, still, frozen in response to Gwen's slow sway, her perfume faded and scattered in high-rise wind.
His gloved fingers flex. ] No.
[ He can't trust himself. He will not trust himself. He's taken this trustfall and failed it so many times; one doesn't need a Bane to break one's back on all of one's failures. Bruce can do that fine on his own.
That said: ] But I'm trying to figure out what makes me compelled to.
[ Like, what the fuck is he doing here, really. Turns out that figuring things out is... a process? Fucking lame. His head bows, and his breath plays against Gwen's hair. Close. ]
( compel him. have compelled him. more than just to remove his mask, more than the awareness that politely telling him he can put it back on is like as not to inspire his present stubbornness in leaving it off. the thing is, )
I haven't.
( she had tried to wring emotions out of him she hadn't known he was just living in, but beyond the sheer, unavoidable magnetism that she operates with at a default—it's not as if that, if it had been more successful, would have made him want to be around her. if anything, it would have made a saner man run for the fucking hills. at no point has gwenaëlle wynne-york twisted bruce wayne around her little finger with anything more powerful than the tilt of her eyebrow or her mouth, the magic she's wrought if anything off-putting.
filling his lungs with music and stripping him of his pretense,
it's an interesting realisation for her. yeah, it's nuts of her to be here, it was nuts of her to text him, nuts of her to keep in touch, but—oh, they are in this together, aren't they. hand in unlovable hand, against better judgment and better angels.
[ There are terrifying truths at play here: that it's highly likely that Gwen being fae is merely a footnote to Bruce's freefall attraction to her midnight eyes, that it is also highly likely that Bruce being a vigilante is just an addendum to his mess of a whole. The hierarchy of attraction stacks in uncomfortable waysー this triangle is particularly strange.
Fact: Gwenaëlle Wynne-York hasn't even drawn the barest outlines of seducing him.
So, respectfully speaking: what the fuck?
Music and stale coffee and Alfred's finger food. The sum of their interactions boils down to thisー the awkwardness of living with themselves. A mistimed waltz. Stepping on each other's feet to find level ground.
Bruce tripped first. ]
You won't.
[ Not now, after she's seen the shape of him, and the color of his blood in proverbial waters. Why should she? She knows, now, what it's like to watch him fumble. Why manufacture it, when it comes so naturally to the man in front of her? All his calluses and bruises.
The toe of his military-grade boot taps against her bare foot. ]
You're still interested in me contributing to your cause?
( gwenaëlle doesn't say, I don't need to, but not because she doesn't think it. )
If anything,
( coolly, )
I think you owe me, now.
( and—that doesn't have to matter to him. bruce wayne, the batman, he operates almost entirely apart from what anyone else gives a shit about, that has become inescapably clear. what is fair or expected is not, necessarily, going to have a great deal of bearing on what it is that he actually does, the math he does of necessity and obligation.
his obligations are opaque to her, at least for now. but his wants,
she thinks it will matter, actually. at least a bit. the breath she takes. that she doesn't move away. that the tilt of her chin slices perfect between inviting and defiant. a dare. )
But that isn't my cause. It's...
( she considers how to put it. )
This is a glimpse of your truth. You've only had a glimpse of mine.
[ It's a strange game of catch and release. Taking bait, and swallowing the jagged bits of hook just to understand what it feels like to tear your throat on something that tastes different. Causes and tenuous honor codes (if they do, in fact, exist) and all.
Bruce doesn't frown under his mask, this time. In that halcyon concept of before, hindsight rendering everything with 20-20 clarity, he stood in front of the same sort of dare, telegraphed from behind a different mask: Selina, slight and lithe and challenging, knowing him and kissing him anyway.
Gwen doesn't make it so easy for Bruce. She hikes her chin, obstinate and pretty, and tells him that he doesn't know shit.
Wild, that that makes him want to kiss her. Damn. ]
It was [ he manages, voice low and hoarse, ] a significant glimpse.
[ He is Not Talking about her nudity, but. Mealy-mouthed, it might actually sound like he is? What a disaster of a human being. It's the fae thing that he's still reeling over, actually, and not the curve of Gwen's body or the cold of her skin, but. He's still a red-blooded male, under all the kevlar.
His chin angles, to see Gwen better in poor light. She really is so lovely. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
ー"A decent night", he reads, and rereads. ]
Sorry to hear that. Especially since your hotel's known for updating their mattresses regularly.
[ Harmless banter, "sorry for your lack of sleep". Implicit, though, is his assumption that she should've been sleeping on those ridiculously-luxe mattresses, which is a weird as fuck thing to point out? Maybe? What do normal people talk about when they're not trying to surreptitiously gather intel about them, but in a well-meaning way?
(It's not that he doesn't care; he does. People are allowed to exist beyond his notice, beyond the realm of his understanding, because god forbid he deny anyone their secrecy, their masks. Butー
ーhe thinks of water and her pale limbs, her music, her bare-boned life history. How much of Gwen's life is hers, and not a footnote for something, someone else?) ]
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gwen stares down at her phone, and—
you know, it's not as if bruce has thus far given the impression of someone with a lot of social deftness. frankly, he hasn't given the impression of a guy who wants to spend a lot of time texting anyone back and forth; he gives the impression of someone who would like to communicate primarily in pained expressions or through his butler. he just doesn't seem like someone who googles hotel reviews in order to make smalltalk, and he certainly doesn't seem like someone who makes enough smalltalk with anyone else for it to just come up.
people have weird interests. maybe he stayed here, once, and someone enthusiastically pitched the quality of the mattresses and their regular replacement to him, and that nugget of information just sat in the back of his head pointlessly until it seemed, this very moment, relevant to the conversation at hand. and maybe there's absolutely nothing more to it than that. and maybe it'd be really fucking paranoid to think that there were,
someone started a rumour that she was dead, hours after she had been sleeping in her bathtub. )
Yeah, they were really nice beds.
( someone was in that room. that is not paranoia, she's certain, that's—
someone thought she was dead. it sinks in as she worries these thoughts between her hands, that the likelihood of someone prank calling the cops is not that high in this very specific instance, that wherever that rumour originated, it probably wasn't a laugh.
suppose then that it isn't the worst thing, that whoever it was tried to get something done about it. but still—
she feels exposed in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact she'd been naked. )
The rental now is fine. I've been thinking of getting something more permanent here, anyway.
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Gwen is correct. Bruce is not the type.
He is also not the type to text, which is mostly his undoing, here. Very difficult to read the patterns of discomfort or suspicion over the dispassionate relay of words on a screen. No inflections, no body language to make him course correct. Insomnia and the mania that comes along for the ride have likely dulled his judgmentー he shouldn't have done any of these things, shouldn't have reached out. He never does. Why start now?
MEDICAL CONDITION? flutters by his side again, picked up on an errant breeze coming in through the thin sliver of his open study window. Outside, Gotham spreads like a nuclear spill: neon, pulsing, waterlogged.
He thinks of cello strings and his footsteps on tile. He almost doesn't respond. ]
The real estate market's in shambles. Now's as good a time as any to buy.
[ Literally no one wants to be here but the absolute shittiest the city has to offer. Apartment high-rises are selling for a fraction of their usual cost. Gwen is fucking crazy. (He's drawn to that, probably.) ]
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maybe she's just not the kind of person who says, oh, by the way, I'm headed for bed, we'll pick this up later. all of those things could be true.
they don't pick it up later, but she's got a lot going on, and he has a lot to look into. it isn't even hard to find her; now's a great time to buy, if you don't mind literally everything about everything. increasingly as she nails down what needs to be in place for the wynne-york project she's able to hand off its component parts to the people who'll do the leg-work to make it happen, leaving her free to spend her time securing a realtor and ignoring GPD's calls.
two nights later, the bat signal hangs in the wrong part of the sky. the angle of it is off, and so is the floodlight at gordon's disposal; he checks. it sits dark and idle and above gotham the signal lights up the overcast nightsky anyway, orienting back to a rooftop. one of those penthouses that are up for a pittance in comparison to what they were worth a few years ago, the entire top two floors of a high-rise building and private use of the roof as well with hanging gardens, a pool, even a helipad. gwenaëlle had viewed it earlier in the day, a little spontaneous but who's going to protest the interest or the speed.
it hadn't been difficult, smiling, to see the agent drop the keys into her hand at the end of the tour. she'd locked up as they left, memorised the codes, made a note of which areas were staffed with security. it's a promising prospect, actually, she's seriously considering making the purchase. the ease with which she, specifically, moves through the building like a hot knife isn't in and of itself a worry to her, not when the way she does that is so specific, but it does merit taking some extra precautions in the future for the people whose abilities might also be. interestingly specific.
gwenaëlle sits by the pool, her high heels on the ground next to her, her feet in the water. she lights a cigarette, figuring she has absolutely no idea how long it typically takes this guy to answer his hails and she's only assuming he'll be able to locate the position of where this light seems to be coming from—
it orients to her precise location, but there's no obvious source to find. just gwen, trailing her feet through the water, her purse beside her, smoke curling into the night air. )
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He wishes those memories, still fresh and raw, would make him second-guess.
(They don't.)
When the Bat appears, he's heralded by dust floating up from concrete to air, hovering through the diffuse angle of light that the beacon casts. A displacement that speaks to the passage of someoneー something. Squint, and Gwen should be able to make him out between two unlit deck chairs, a questionably-human inkblot.
He doesn't speak. (Bruce has a feeling that opening his mouth would blow whatever cover he may or may not possess; a musical ear is adept at identifying close cadences. Oh well.) Instead, the Bat tips his chin towards the streak of yellow bisecting the dark of the night sky, and inquires, without inquiring, what the hell this is about. ]
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closes it into a fist and the signal winks out. she takes a breath, studying him, unsettled by his silence and not sure if that's the point of it or something else. she stops, just within her arm's reach of him, one eyebrow raised.
the outfit is a lot, in person. )
In some literature on the subject of nymphs,
( is almost certainly not how he expected this conversation to start, )
the men writing these books dutifully record that they are, as a species, known for killing men who watch them bathe.
( gwen jabs him in the chest with her finger. she misjudges both her hand and his armor, very slightly, but she's working herself up to the kind of mood where jolting her joints harder than she expected to really doesn't make a blind bit of difference— )
It is my personally held belief that this reflects less on my kind and more on the fact that men have been fucking perverts since the dawn of mankind and women of every species have always known they were going to have to deal with that themselves. It's interesting to me, the gulf between what is seen and what is understood.
I think you were in my bathroom earlier this week. I would like to know why. We may be revisiting point one in this conversation.
( that is definitely a threat. )
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And yet.
He doesn't move. Doesn't flinch, either, even when the floodlights go off and he's left, chillingly, to contend with nymphs and the possibility that he's in over his head, whichー well. He is, a majority of the time. Even with preparation, even with two decades of self-training, he keeps finding himself stumbling over these outliers that he fails (fails, every fucking time) to anticipate. It makes him feel like a child again, heels of his polished dress shoes buried in a puddle, watching bodies fall.
Gwen jabs him like a gunshot. "My kind", she says, and his mind races with the impossible possibility that he is contending with someone who is
not human.
(water, the chill of her skin, her song stringing his nerves raw. context clues.)
His silence is less about upholding the mystique of a grown-ass man who masquerades as fuzzy winged vermin, and more about letting his synapses breathe. Instinct tells him he should keep his fucking mouth shut, to give away less than he already has, butー ]
Not to watch you bathe.
[ Answering her question, without actually saying anything. Implicit: "we don't need to revisit point one, as I had no idea you would be sleeping underwater in the first place. What the fuck is that about?"
His chin angles to the side; he's done this before. Some obvious averting of gaze, a comfort in tracing shadows instead of meeting expectations in eyes. It's only his posture that's different, more comfortable in his armor than his suit or civilians. Bruce Wayne wore his designers poorly, but Batman wears his ridiculous excuse for a costume with ludicrous dignity. ]
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Great,
( flatly, )
then you won't mind explaining what you were doing. I realize Gotham is really going through it at the moment, but I promise you philanthropy isn't always a fucking crime.
( would she have made the dig if she knew she were talking to thomas wayne's son?
—maybe. gwenaëlle isn't known for pulling her punches, especially not when she's annoyed. in his periphery, her eyes are larger and darker than they were a moment ago; the shape of her pupil odd, different, and then gone. ordinary. easy to have missed, when and if he refocuses on her. )
I intend to spend time in this city. If that's going to be a problem, I'd like to work it out ahead of time.
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Silent, again. Gwen's forward propulsion and would-be aggression slips over the Bat, catching in the ink-black of his mental armor for a breath of a moment before sliding and pooling by his feet. He, after all, agrees with her: philanthropy is not always synonymous with mustache-twirling villains and their hairless pets, and she is owed, to some degree, an explanation for why a strange man in a bat costume would invade the privacy of her space.
It's too bad that he doesn't have a good excuse. (Never does.) Observe the vigilante in his natural habitat, chewing over unarticulated words before he can spit out the ones that taste the least unsavory.
Gloved hands flex and unflex, once, twice. ]
Organizing a fundraiser is a transient act of good, [ he finally manages. In the vague, oblong lighting of this isolated space, Gwen seems fuzzy and obscure; no less lovely for the way shadows cut across her features, asymmetrical and serrated, but unknowable. Impenetrable.
(He does not wonder what will happen if he surges forward and tips her balance towards the water's edge; even he doesn't have that particular death wish.) ]
You decided to stay here, in Gotham. [ Which is what Gwen just corroborated, and which is the root cause of his curiosity. He voices it: ] Why?
[ Like. Literally Why. In this day and age, a GoFundMe from the other side of the world can do just as much, soー
ーwhy? Who is she indebted to, or what's holding her attention? (If she's not human, then even more so: what could a nymph want from a city like this?) ]
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he has no idea about her teeth. but she hasn't tested them, either— )
That's a great question.
( it's a distinct voice he asks it in. )
Here is the thing, you have invaded my privacy for apparently no reason except having no concept of what is and is not your fucking business, ruined a perfectly good hotel suite and tied me up in overly-anxious police officers who are more likely to shoot themselves in the dicks than do anything useful if I am threatened.
So I do not feel obligated to answer your questions until I'm satisfied with the answers to mine.
( probably she doesn't actually mean it when she says, )
If you want to make it even and get a straight answer without giving me anything for it, I should get to see you naked, too.
( which isn't to say she would stop him if he took her up on it. it's a joke! unless it works, in which case she's a strategic genius.
she is not a strategic genius, she's just pissed off. )
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Batman is not a Good Person; neither is Bruce Wayne. "Virtuous" is not a trait listed in his frankly sparse list of positive attributes on his CV, which means that he, in fact, believes that he doesn't owe Gwen an explanation despite him wanting oneー
ーwhich is fucked, morally. Hm. Bruce, seeing Gwen's fangs out (metaphorically), considers his options. ]
I could show you my ankles.
[ He says, dryly. Humor! Very Victorian of him, to imply that uncovering a sliver of skin on his otherwise entirely covered body is the same as getting undressed. For an insane half-breath, it seems like he'll leave it at that, butー
ーwell. Off goes one glove, peeled like carbon snakeskin. There is a human hand underneath all that armor, and it flexes with bruised knuckles, a cut on the side of it bisecting the skin.
The same cut that Bruce had in the cafe, if Gwen noticed. ]
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gwenaëlle seizes his hand between both of her own and studies it more intensely than really seems necessary. when she looks up, her eyes are
different.
bigger than they were before, and not only because they're open so wide. blue-black where they had been white, but only at the very edges; her slit-pupils blown out wide, dazzling as a prism, like stars. distracting. they'd be lovely, maybe, if she weren't narrowing them at him that way. when she speaks, there is a command in her voice that reaches past the part of him that decides what he does or does not do and bypasses it entirely— )
Take off your cowl.
( what, she's just going to ask the guy who clearly doesn't give a shit about answering her questions if he's bruce wayne?
no. )
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Take off your cowl.
He doesn't have an antivenom for this brand of compulsion. It spreads through him, noxious and affectionate; invisible arms wrapped around him from behind, whispering. Take off your cowl. Take off your cowl.
Fingers hook under the space where the mask segments under his chin. The wrongness of it all is nauseating, but the freefall anxiety isn't enoughー
ーthe cowl slips off. Under the armor of kevlar and carbon, Batman is just A Man.
He's Bruce Wayne. Sunken eyes, dark circles. The reveal makes him sick. ]
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who wouldn't want to give her what she wants? how natural, for the want to be his own—
this, her eyes cold diamonds more unsettling for being set in the human-seeming of her face, is not that. it is not meant to be that. she shows her hand, deliberately, in forcing him to show his,
she doesn't think he'll see the equity for what she means it to be, or care much for it, but it matters to her. and even as he'd lifted his hands, she hadn't been one hundred percent certain what she'd find beneath it.
but there he is. )
Huh.
( she smudges the black around his eyes with her thumb, and tilts her head, studying him, stepping back out of easy reach of his hands as she relinquishes her grip upon him, physical and figurative. )
That makes sense. I didn't know what kind of fire I was playing with, did I. Then again, you thought everything you felt when I played for you was your own, so we were both in the dark.
( this is—
exposure, she thinks. truly. more than nakedness, which is the least of her own concerns. and she feels a little more at ease, rendering them both vulnerable if anyone has to be, which is fucked up but in a way she's already decided she's accepted about herself. a hum, just a sound without a pull, a placeholder for a thought, )
Now we're even.
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He cools from the molten heat of that proffered command; shame starts to corrode him from where his face is exposed, so at odds with the ironclad security of his costume. Bruce Wayne is a construct that people like the Riddler speak about with disdain, that he himself regards with distant contemptー it unnerves him, to be associated with that particular part of his identity at this time of night.
Even under the poor lighting of the rooftop, Gwen should be able to see how Bruce flinches at the word even, as if the double-edged sword has cut a fraction too deep this time. Dark eyes flitting to the side, venting discomfort. His hands furl into fists by his side, and bloom again with long fingers grasping at nothing in particular. ]
You didn't know, [ "what kind of fire she was playing with," ] and I knew less.
You're right. This makes us even.
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You can put it back on.
( implicit: if it makes him more comfortable. that she doesn't say that, out loud, is mostly because she wonders if he might dig his heels in against his own comfort if she were to lampshade it—resist the accommodation just to prove he doesn't need it. maybe he won't like the idea she gives him permission, either way, but
she got what she wanted. he can put it back on. the in-between of it is strange, like he's neither one nor the other, which is...familiar. that's the problem with bruce wayne, so far, his familiarity.
at length, )
I don't owe you an explanation, for the record, but equally you already fucking have one because I've consistently been informing you of everything I do in Gotham and why since we met. You can look up everything to do with—
( that's where she stops.
it clicks, in an instant: the foundation, the programmes, her father. there is information readily available at the fingertips of even someone with fewer resources than bruce wayne, if they're dedicated and interested. flick through all the getty water-marked professional event shots, read the financial transparency reports, the interviews. there is a wealth of information,
but not about her. increasingly, she's made sure of that; limited her footprint, her public profile. it exists, because it's unavoidable, but she's a private person and it isn't actually that difficult for her to maintain that privacy.
under her breath, ) oh, for fuck's sake.
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But, reciprocally: Gwen's inwards-facing exasperation. Bruce, if he were pettier, might've smiled at her outburst, understanding it for what it is. Sometimes, it's the obfuscation that gives creatures like them away.
Doesn't it fucking suck, looking into a mirror? ]
Yeah.
[ He says, for "oh fuck's sake". Asshole. It's really too bad that he genuinely gets no satisfaction from this, and "yeah" winds up sounding more like "don't worry, I'm just as bugfuck nuts for relating".
His cape whips in the wind. Just to add more surrealism to the ever-growing pile. ]
Your fans gave me more insight on you than your own social media did.
[ Dryly. ]
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( gwenaëlle is derailed from what might have been a one-sided argument with the stone-faced goblin on this rooftop with her by the insane shit coming out of his mouth, which. )
No, don't, we're—we will come back to that.
( even as she says it, will they? where is that going. does she want to fully understand what he just said in all its implications. quite probably not, actually. fans. what fans. irrationally, she blames whatever this is on wes—
especially unfair, because he's not exactly popular with most of the small community that makes up the corner of the internet that knows who she is and cares.
deep breath. )
Look,
( calmly! )
What do you want. From me.
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(He hopes she doesn't come back to this topic.)
He also kind of wishes she didn't keep asking him this question, because he doesn't have a crystalline answer for it; not one she can hold up to the light and decipher, or glean anything beautiful and clear from. It's all a muddle to him, too, the subject of trailing people out of not just utility (what the fuck benefit is this doing him, besides opening up another, more gigantic can of elephant-sized worms)ー what does he say to satisfy her? Satisfy himself?
Refracted light from poolwater drawing mercurial patterns on his face: ]
I wanted to know [ slowly, as if the words don't slot right between his teeth ], if I could trust myself around you.
[ So
this was about him??? Fuck. ]
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it's worse than the thing that her face just did when he said the words your fans — the only way to avoid coming back to that topic will be to never speak to her again, she will be a glass and a half into a bottle of red wine and emboldened by it, and her curiosity will be irresistible — because it the expression isn't twisting with displeasure or hostility, no. no, this is worse, because though her eyes narrow
the corner of her mouth twitches. she rocks back on her heels, her toes curling against the cold stone underneath them, head tipping to the side as she studies him in an entirely different way. oh, she thinks, and, )
Oh,
( out loud. gwenaëlle, who has trusted herself around bruce wayne zero percent since about thirty seconds after they met in person, closes the small distance between them — stands close enough to be aware of how she's breathing, and doesn't touch him. close enough that there is effort, precise, involved in not touching him. consciousness of the thing. one of her expertly shaped eyebrows rises. so does she, onto her toes. )
And do you?
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It occurs to him, always, that he hates being seen. What good is there, in being known? And how will it serve him, now, to understand that he trusts that Gwen will shove him backwards off of these however-many stories, if she had to?
Streetcars and dogs barking, in the near distance. Bruce remains the inertia, still, frozen in response to Gwen's slow sway, her perfume faded and scattered in high-rise wind.
His gloved fingers flex. ] No.
[ He can't trust himself. He will not trust himself. He's taken this trustfall and failed it so many times; one doesn't need a Bane to break one's back on all of one's failures. Bruce can do that fine on his own.
That said: ] But I'm trying to figure out what makes me compelled to.
[ Like, what the fuck is he doing here, really. Turns out that figuring things out is... a process? Fucking lame. His head bows, and his breath plays against Gwen's hair. Close. ]
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( compel him. have compelled him. more than just to remove his mask, more than the awareness that politely telling him he can put it back on is like as not to inspire his present stubbornness in leaving it off. the thing is, )
I haven't.
( she had tried to wring emotions out of him she hadn't known he was just living in, but beyond the sheer, unavoidable magnetism that she operates with at a default—it's not as if that, if it had been more successful, would have made him want to be around her. if anything, it would have made a saner man run for the fucking hills. at no point has gwenaëlle wynne-york twisted bruce wayne around her little finger with anything more powerful than the tilt of her eyebrow or her mouth, the magic she's wrought if anything off-putting.
filling his lungs with music and stripping him of his pretense,
it's an interesting realisation for her. yeah, it's nuts of her to be here, it was nuts of her to text him, nuts of her to keep in touch, but—oh, they are in this together, aren't they. hand in unlovable hand, against better judgment and better angels.
how interesting. )
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Fact: Gwenaëlle Wynne-York hasn't even drawn the barest outlines of seducing him.
So, respectfully speaking: what the fuck?
Music and stale coffee and Alfred's finger food. The sum of their interactions boils down to thisー the awkwardness of living with themselves. A mistimed waltz. Stepping on each other's feet to find level ground.
Bruce tripped first. ]
You won't.
[ Not now, after she's seen the shape of him, and the color of his blood in proverbial waters. Why should she? She knows, now, what it's like to watch him fumble. Why manufacture it, when it comes so naturally to the man in front of her? All his calluses and bruises.
The toe of his military-grade boot taps against her bare foot. ]
You're still interested in me contributing to your cause?
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If anything,
( coolly, )
I think you owe me, now.
( and—that doesn't have to matter to him. bruce wayne, the batman, he operates almost entirely apart from what anyone else gives a shit about, that has become inescapably clear. what is fair or expected is not, necessarily, going to have a great deal of bearing on what it is that he actually does, the math he does of necessity and obligation.
his obligations are opaque to her, at least for now. but his wants,
she thinks it will matter, actually. at least a bit. the breath she takes. that she doesn't move away. that the tilt of her chin slices perfect between inviting and defiant. a dare. )
But that isn't my cause. It's...
( she considers how to put it. )
This is a glimpse of your truth. You've only had a glimpse of mine.
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Bruce doesn't frown under his mask, this time. In that halcyon concept of before, hindsight rendering everything with 20-20 clarity, he stood in front of the same sort of dare, telegraphed from behind a different mask: Selina, slight and lithe and challenging, knowing him and kissing him anyway.
Gwen doesn't make it so easy for Bruce. She hikes her chin, obstinate and pretty, and tells him that he doesn't know shit.
Wild, that that makes him want to kiss her. Damn. ]
It was [ he manages, voice low and hoarse, ] a significant glimpse.
[ He is Not Talking about her nudity, but. Mealy-mouthed, it might actually sound like he is? What a disaster of a human being. It's the fae thing that he's still reeling over, actually, and not the curve of Gwen's body or the cold of her skin, but. He's still a red-blooded male, under all the kevlar.
His chin angles, to see Gwen better in poor light. She really is so lovely. ]
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