[ 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. ]
( it does kind of sound like he's talking about seeing her naked,
but she doesn't actually think that's it. there's something about bruce that just says: this guy is probably not easily felled by something as easy as nudity, even as lovely as she is, nude or otherwise. she can imagine a dispassion in him that she has exploited the lack of, in others—nudity is not significant to her, not a vulnerability. modest, immodest, a body's just a body and hers is a work of fucking art but she holds herself the same naked or clothed.
he doesn't, she thinks. she thinks that's unlikely. but equally she thinks it takes more than a well-turned ankle to turn his head, to catch him off-guard,
she wonders if he'd think she was beautiful if she let him see her. it itches under her skin that she doesn't know the answer. )
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. It wasn't.
Edited (good ol willy shakes) 2022-05-29 10:17 (UTC)
ーa 4:28 am sunrise, cresting over polluted rivers bracketing Gotham like a pair of wide thighs. It's the speckled patterns of cigarette ash, the Rorschach spread of motor oil in puddles slowly drawing a trail from sidewalk to gutter, waterfalling into an unknowable sewer abyss. Beauty is blood and water and bruises, the shape of a wristbone and the thin skin that stretches over it.
Bruce has grown out of loving anything clear, or clean-cut; his apology to his parents, for enduring.
Immediately: ] Hamlet. [ yeah, dingus, she fucking knows, she just fucking quoted it. (this is him saying: yes, I have two brain cells to rub together to play ball with you. just in case.) ]
Then, [ he continues, with the ungloved hand offered for her to take, ] I'll have to figure out what your cause is.
[ Because he's a detective, right. (Wrong.) ]
Edited (50 years later, finds heinous typo, is filled with self-loathing) 2022-05-30 12:53 (UTC)
(yeah, dingus is more or less what her expression says, too—all those glamours and still gwenaëlle's face has all the subtlety of a picture book, or a lit brick through a window—but he offers her his hand and she accepts it without so much as pausing to consider the wisdom.
granted, impulse decisions really seem to be the goer with this one. and he doesn't need to be a great detective to have figured that out. )
Maybe it's just not that deep.
( probably, she is not going to soon convince him that she's so boring and simple—
especially not because she's bored of waiting to see if he'll do it, and stands her bare feet on his boots so she can reach him to kiss. )
[ Impulse is the same as seeing red, really. The sort of solar-flare emotion that jolts you into an involuntary action. It isn't something Bruce is intimate with, given his penchant for charting things in blueprints, in tactical terms; he doesn't often look at a person and wonder what it'd feel like to lose himself in them, or how they taste mid-kiss.
Right now, thoughー
ーokay, it isn't that fucking deep. She surges up on her toes, and he's leaning to meet her at that weird halfway point where the rational part of his brain grapples with the lizard bit, where his inner turmoil gets its teeth kicked out by the reptile instincts that hiss, exasperated, just fucking get on with it.
Should she be disappointed that Bruce Wayne is a red-blooded human male, under all that riot gear? Probably. But here he is, perfectly demure in this kiss (boring as sin), his hand sliding up from Gwen's hold up to her forearm, where he thumbs for her pulse along that soft spot at its bend.
He doesn't breathe, until he does. Warm and haltering against her lips. She's still cool to his touch, and it makes him shiver. ]
( stepping down onto the cold roof tile again, still holding onto him, little cold hands— )
I'm not not still annoyed about ruining my hotel stay. I liked that hotel. It had nice beds.
( that she mostly didn't sleep in, and his pointed messages on the subject are still slightly unhinged, but you know what, he's doomed himself to getting a review of the sheet count and mattress density of every fucking hotel she stays in from here to eternity, probably.
well, maybe not eternity. even if she didn't have the life-span she does, there's not terrible odds she'll outlive Local Guy Who Jumps In Front Of Psychos All Day. )
[ Little cold hands, cold poolside tile, lukewarm chemical water. Gotham whips nuclear-neon-air-pollution from streetside to skyline, and Bruce, the city's most favored and most loathed prodigal son, realizes how incongruous Gwen is, in all of this. The most natural thing this shithole metropolis has seen in years, an undine straight out of esoteric poetry.
He's flattered that she liked the beds. There's so little to like about anything, on a good day. ]
Good room service, too. [ Did she try their Lobster Thermidor? Very decadent, verging on disgusting. That, or their breakfast muffins, which come in audacious varieties and heinous portions. All the world's vices in one common pastry.
It might've been nice to have brunch with her. And like, actually fucking eat something this time, instead of hinging three balanced meals on a cup of coffee (that he didn't drink, what a colossal asshole).
Somewhere, there's a gunshot. Like, now, though? When the city's still two-sevenths underwater? Sigh.
Bruce, forehead tipped, breath warmer than one would imagine, appends: ] Criminals.
[ If he were slick: hey babe, you want to watch me beat people up? What he actually means: maybe I can save you watching me beat a dude's face in for the second date in the cape and cowl. Maybe. ]
( a breath— a second one, and although she's also not not interested in watching him beat people up, it does seem like a second date kind of vibe. also, this is a terrible first date, and she's going to have to put that in her pocket in case she needs to win an argument in the future.
he is, she suspects, difficult to win arguments with. probably if she said it out loud in the right place, alfred would make a kind of involuntary sound of absolute exhaustion. that's fine; gwen is an expert at altering her win conditions on the fly when necessary. like now, )
No rest for the wicked.
( him or the criminals?
yes. )
You can pick our next outing, ( is a little drier, stepping back, folding her hands around her elbows. ) I know you have my number.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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. ]
no subject
( 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.
no subject
(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. ]
no subject
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?
no subject
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. ]
no subject
( 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. )
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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. ]
no subject
but she doesn't actually think that's it. there's something about bruce that just says: this guy is probably not easily felled by something as easy as nudity, even as lovely as she is, nude or otherwise. she can imagine a dispassion in him that she has exploited the lack of, in others—nudity is not significant to her, not a vulnerability. modest, immodest, a body's just a body and hers is a work of fucking art but she holds herself the same naked or clothed.
he doesn't, she thinks. she thinks that's unlikely. but equally she thinks it takes more than a well-turned ankle to turn his head, to catch him off-guard,
she wonders if he'd think she was beautiful if she let him see her. it itches under her skin that she doesn't know the answer. )
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. It wasn't.
no subject
ーa 4:28 am sunrise, cresting over polluted rivers bracketing Gotham like a pair of wide thighs. It's the speckled patterns of cigarette ash, the Rorschach spread of motor oil in puddles slowly drawing a trail from sidewalk to gutter, waterfalling into an unknowable sewer abyss. Beauty is blood and water and bruises, the shape of a wristbone and the thin skin that stretches over it.
Bruce has grown out of loving anything clear, or clean-cut; his apology to his parents, for enduring.
Immediately: ] Hamlet. [ yeah, dingus, she fucking knows, she just fucking quoted it. (this is him saying: yes, I have two brain cells to rub together to play ball with you. just in case.) ]
Then, [ he continues, with the ungloved hand offered for her to take, ] I'll have to figure out what your cause is.
[ Because he's a detective, right. (Wrong.) ]
no subject
granted, impulse decisions really seem to be the goer with this one. and he doesn't need to be a great detective to have figured that out. )
Maybe it's just not that deep.
( probably, she is not going to soon convince him that she's so boring and simple—
especially not because she's bored of waiting to see if he'll do it, and stands her bare feet on his boots so she can reach him to kiss. )
no subject
Right now, thoughー
ーokay, it isn't that fucking deep. She surges up on her toes, and he's leaning to meet her at that weird halfway point where the rational part of his brain grapples with the lizard bit, where his inner turmoil gets its teeth kicked out by the reptile instincts that hiss, exasperated, just fucking get on with it.
Should she be disappointed that Bruce Wayne is a red-blooded human male, under all that riot gear? Probably. But here he is, perfectly demure in this kiss (boring as sin), his hand sliding up from Gwen's hold up to her forearm, where he thumbs for her pulse along that soft spot at its bend.
He doesn't breathe, until he does. Warm and haltering against her lips. She's still cool to his touch, and it makes him shiver. ]
no subject
( stepping down onto the cold roof tile again, still holding onto him, little cold hands— )
I'm not not still annoyed about ruining my hotel stay. I liked that hotel. It had nice beds.
( that she mostly didn't sleep in, and his pointed messages on the subject are still slightly unhinged, but you know what, he's doomed himself to getting a review of the sheet count and mattress density of every fucking hotel she stays in from here to eternity, probably.
well, maybe not eternity. even if she didn't have the life-span she does, there's not terrible odds she'll outlive Local Guy Who Jumps In Front Of Psychos All Day. )
no subject
He's flattered that she liked the beds. There's so little to like about anything, on a good day. ]
Good room service, too. [ Did she try their Lobster Thermidor? Very decadent, verging on disgusting. That, or their breakfast muffins, which come in audacious varieties and heinous portions. All the world's vices in one common pastry.
It might've been nice to have brunch with her. And like, actually fucking eat something this time, instead of hinging three balanced meals on a cup of coffee (that he didn't drink, what a colossal asshole).
Somewhere, there's a gunshot. Like, now, though? When the city's still two-sevenths underwater? Sigh.
Bruce, forehead tipped, breath warmer than one would imagine, appends: ] Criminals.
[ If he were slick: hey babe, you want to watch me beat people up? What he actually means: maybe I can save you watching me beat a dude's face in for the second date in the cape and cowl. Maybe. ]
no subject
he is, she suspects, difficult to win arguments with. probably if she said it out loud in the right place, alfred would make a kind of involuntary sound of absolute exhaustion. that's fine; gwen is an expert at altering her win conditions on the fly when necessary. like now, )
No rest for the wicked.
( him or the criminals?
yes. )
You can pick our next outing, ( is a little drier, stepping back, folding her hands around her elbows. ) I know you have my number.