Work Text:
"Gotham will get better one day," Vengeance insists after the flood as if they are not surrounded by evidence to the contrary. Clearly, he has a traumatic brain injury. It's the only way to explain his allegiance to a city that is hellbent on destroying itself.
"Spoken like someone rich enough to wait for that day," she scoffs, her sharp tone belied by the softness of her hands running along his jaw. "Or are we still pretending that you're just a poor boy from a poor family?"
"Maybe I have a wealthy benefactor," Vengeance says with a smirk like this is Great Expectations and Miss Havisham is in the business of funding a vigilante's quest for societal reform.
*
When The Wayne Foundation throws a fundraiser to rebuild The Gotham Garden, Selina walks in through the front door. In a party dripping with high society like this, no one dares to risk offending anyone by checking invites. The trick is to look like you belong; if there's anything Selina is good at, it's fitting in just enough.
There's a different energy at this event, a latent buzz in the air as everyone eagerly waits to catch a glimpse of their reclusive host. The last anyone saw of Bruce Wayne was at the former mayor's disastrous funeral and even that appearance was overshadowed by the DA walking in with a bomb strapped to his neck and a puzzle taped to his chest. For all intents and purposes, Bruce Wayne is Gotham's own Moby Dick and everyone has boarded the Pequod to catch just one glimpse.
When their host finally emerges, he's an hour late to his own party and already a little tipsy. Either rehab stuck or he has gotten some sun and a decent haircut while the city was destroying itself because even Selina begrudgingly admits that he looks good, albeit thankfully he is clueless about it. His cheeks flush at the sound of applause as he makes his way down the grand staircase. Stopping at the halfway point, the crown prince holds court over his subjects – there are no peers for someone who is richer than God – and thanks everyone for coming to his "little shindig," seemingly surprised at the sound of his own voice as it booms across the room.
"What happened during the flood was a tragedy. Every day The Gotham Garden sits in ruins is another day that we are reminded of how close this city came to losing it all. In the spirit of bringing the luster back to Gotham, I am pleased to announce that The Wayne Foundation will match whatever we raise tonight to help rebuild one of the cornerstones of our community." The room breaks out into boisterous applause. "Ladies and gentlemen, please have some more champagne and open up your wallets for a good cause."
Bruce Wayne can barely descend the remaining stairs before his face disappears in a sea of big hair and shiny bald heads. In front of her, Selina hears a redhead wearing a three-thousand-dollar Hermès cape hiss to her friend, "Flaunting the Wayne family wealth like this is poor form, Genevieve."
"That's what happens when you don't have parents to teach you how to behave in proper society, Dolores," Genevieve replies with a tsk. "Such a shame."
"It's not like we haven't all had to work through our own traumas," Dolores exclaims heartlessly.
The rich really do eat their young, Selina thinks right before she innocently bumps into a young waiter carrying a glass of pinot, already halfway across the room when Dolores yelps in surprise and shouts that the kid is only making it worse as he valiantly tries to dab at the sea of red wine cascading across her white cape with a cocktail napkin. Selina is still laughing at the old hag when she walks into someone straight out of a Dolce & Gabbana ad.
"Pardon me," he says, grabbing onto her elbow and pulling her towards him before she can fall backwards into someone else. When Selina looks up, she's staring at the white whale up close, his blue eyes concerned as he asks, "Are you okay, Miss…?"
"Kyle," she answers, shrugging him off. "You should watch where you're going."
"Apologies," he says before extending his hand. "I'm Bruce."
Selina rolls her eyes. "I know who you are, Mr. Wayne."
"Bruce."
"Everyone knows who you are, Bruce."
Bruce shrugs like it's such a burden to exist with a silver spoon in his mouth. She feels awkward being on the receiving end of such intense scrutiny from a guy powerful enough to have her arrested for using the wrong dinner fork. It takes a moment before he realizes that he's being rude and offers to buy her a drink to apologize, hand already at her back as he smoothly leads her to the bar at the other end of the room. She orders a Manhattan while he asks for another whiskey and proceeds to shove what will probably be several months of rent into the bartender's tip glass.
"Are you enjoying yourself, Miss Kyle?"
"Selina." Normally, she would lean in close and whisper that the evening is certainly looking up now while lifting his designer watch, but she can't stop thinking about that ridiculous speech. Something in her flares at this idiot's audacious belief that if he throws enough money at a problem, it'll go away. There's little doubt in her mind that he is Vengeance's mysterious benefactor – Bruce Wayne is rich and Vengeance has tech that would put the DoD to shame – but she's not sure why it bothers her so much to picture Bruce Wayne cutting checks to fund his little pet project like it's something as mundane as buying naming rights to a star online while The Bat runs around town risking his life to clean up the Wayne family's mess.
"You know that your canapé budget alone could restore Old Town to its former glory, right?"
"I didn't know Old Town had any former glory to restore."
It feels disloyal to her former neighborhood to agree with him so she presses on instead. "My point is that the money you wasted on throwing this party could've been used to do actual good for whatever cause you're peddling this week."
"The restoration of The Garden," Bruce replies sassily. "Didn't you listen to my speech? I don't know, I thought it was pretty good."
"The Gotham Garden is only a cornerstone of society if you live above 59th Street. Seems like there should be more important things to worry about than whether The Griffins can play at home this season."
"I'm not much of a basketball fan," Bruce chuckles. "The mayor asked for my help in raising funds and I—"
"Danced like a monkey?" Selina laughs bitterly. "I should've known that the wealthy shut-in's speech about a sense of community was full of shit."
"Actually, my parents' first date was at a Billy Joel concert in The Garden," he confesses with the smallest hint of what could pass for a real smile. "Just Thomas, Martha, and twenty thousand people singing along to 'Piano Man'…"
There is something lost in his eyes as his voice trails off. Selina feels a twinge of guilt gnaw at her and wants to tell him that there's no appeasing ghosts so he shouldn't bother trying, but instead she mumbles an apology into her drink. For a second, it's like he's not even aware that she's still standing next to him but then Bruce snaps out of his trance as quickly as it came over him and that perfect practiced smile is back on his face as he waves off her concern by saying that it was a lifetime ago.
Turning to her, Bruce sighs and dips his head closer to say, "Since you're clearly less than impressed with my philanthropic efforts—"
"Oh, are you trying to impress me?" Selina asks with a grin, her voice low enough that he needs to lean in even closer to hear her. As her fingertips drum against his lapel, she realizes that Bruce Wayne is surprisingly solid for someone who looked like he was going to pass out the last time he was seen in public. Before she can get distracted by that observation, Selina pinpoints the exact moment that his rehearsed confidence falters as his breathing quickens. Interesting.
"Maybe you should give me some pointers over dinner," Bruce suggests, his words nearly jumbling together like he has only a finite amount of time left to get through this conversation before he turns into a pumpkin.
"On how to impress me? Now that would be cheating." Selina tsks against his ear with a laugh before turning to leave. As she is walking away, Selina calls over her shoulder, "Thanks for the drink, Mr. Wayne."
"Bruce!" he corrects a little too eagerly.
The next morning, The Gotham Gazette reports that The Wayne Foundation fundraiser for The Garden was a monumental success. Below the fold, they mention that Bruce Wayne has also personally given five million dollars to cleanup efforts in Old Town and donated the company helicopter to the national guard to aid in their efforts to airlift people still stranded in flood ravaged parts of downtown.
*
"I met your friend last week," Selina announces on yet another rooftop.
In the absence of any good leads, Vengeance is staking out the warehouse where The Penguin last set up shop in the hopes that some goon who didn't get the memo will show up and lead him to the new location. As far as strategies go, Selina thinks it's an exercise in futility. If this hypothetical moron is dumb enough to come to the wrong location, it's probably because he doesn't know where the right one is, but Vengeance is convinced that this plan, as stupid as it is, has to be better than nothing. (Selina thinks it's probably the same as nothing, but who is she to burst his bubble?)
"Why are you talking to Gordon?"
Selina makes a face that he can't see. "I don't talk to cops."
A beat and then gruffly: "I don't have any other friends."
As confessions go, it would be extremely sad if The Bat seemed at all troubled by it. Instead, he only expresses discomfort that she is still attempting to learn more about him past his affinity for wearing black and communicating with his knuckles. Every time she skirts around anything remotely personal, he tries to feign boredom – as if a grown man dressing up like a bat isn't far more intriguing than watching a whole lot of nothing happen in the abandoned warehouse down below – and somehow manages to become even more monosyllabic than usual.
"Bruce Wayne is bankrolling your entire crusade and you didn't even teach him the secret handshake?" Selina tuts. "That's ice cold."
Bingo! Next to her, Vengeance's entire body tenses up for just one fleeting moment that she wouldn't even have recognized if she hadn't spent a dizzying amount of time pressed up against his body over the last few weeks. Selina has wasted many nights thinking about the hitch in his throat when he pulled her into the shadows against him in the mayor's study while the rent-a-cops made their patrols, his jaw making the softest of clicks as if he was grinding his teeth to stay in control. She tries not to explore that train of thought now as Vengeance shakes his head and shifts to the left so that she can see even less of him than she could before. Considering that he's never been loquacious to begin with, giving her the silent treatment doesn't have much effect other than to make Selina smile. Sometimes he's so melodramatic that she wonders if he's not just a theater kid at heart.
"I'm not judging, V," Selina says with a laugh even though she absolutely is. Vengeance looks at her incredulously. "Bruce Wayne is a massive tool and I wouldn't want to claim him as my phone-a-friend either."
Vengeance frowns and tells her that she has no idea what she's talking about. She waits for him to expand on that thought by extolling Bruce Wayne's hidden virtues, but he silently peers through his binoculars instead.
"You know, if you let me into that clubhouse of yours, I bet we could become really good friends," Selina purrs in his ear, practically burning up from the warmth in his cheeks. She doesn't expect him to take the bait, but it's always fun to dangle it anyway.
"Stakeouts are supposed to be quiet, Selina," Vengeance grumbles testily.
*
There is a special place in hell for people who show up unannounced to someone's apartment at ten in the morning on a Sunday. At first Selina thinks it is her piece of shit landlord and chooses to ignore the knocking until he gets tired and moves on. He's been rumbling for two months that their building is one of a handful on the entire block that managed to avoid sustaining major flood damage, a fact that Vito naturally wants to exploit with a rent hike so they can appreciate how good they have it. But as the knocking persists and starts to morph into a pounding headache, Selina wonders if it's the biochemist across the hall who is always trying to give Selina plants to improve the ambience in her apartment. She tried to tell her that she's got cats and a black thumb, but Pamela seemed to take it as a challenge and left a pot of marigolds in front of her door a week later with a note in loopy cursive that simply read "low maintenance, cats love them!" The botanist is weird, but not so out of the loop that she'd play drums on Selina's door this early in the morning. Selina briefly considers that it might be the police, but she hasn't pulled a score in weeks and even the most corrupt cops would've announced themselves by now. With a groan, Selina drags herself out of bed with her eyes still closed and stumbles over a very displeased orange tabby on her way to the front door.
"For fuck's sake," she winces as the thumping gets louder, "unless you're on fire—"
"Not on fire," the person on the other side happily announces as Selina yanks open the door. "Hi."
"Bruce Wayne?"
The East End gets a bright day about four times a year so naturally the universe would decide that today is the day the sun will make its presence known through the wall-to-wall windows on her right. Selina tries to squint past the blinding spots of light as she puts her hand up to shield her face, but it's not enough. She feels like she's staring into a solar eclipse without so much as a homemade cardboard viewer.
"You should get blackout curtains," Bruce Wayne offers unsolicited, his chipper tone making it seem like they're friends who dispense interior decorating advice to each other. "I thought I could take you to brunch."
There is no way any of this is happening. Selina is still drunk from last night when the apartment had felt very big and very sad without Annika. She fell asleep watching Pretty Woman so now her brain is punishing her with visions of the only billionaire she knows showing up at her door to ask her out like this is at all how normal people behave outside the confines of a lucid dream.
"What?" she asks stupidly because her brain can't process any of this. Bruce Wayne finally presses his sunglasses into her hands and once she slips them on, the world feels marginally more manageable, but Selina wouldn't expect anything less from a pair of shades that cost more than her rent. If the glasses are real, he must be too. Annoyed that she has to deal with an existential crisis so early in the morning, Selina huffs, "Most people call first, Bruce."
He misses the point entirely by looking extremely pleased that she's calling him by his first name. "I didn't have your number," he grins as he pushes his hair back with his hand.
"How do you know where I live?"
He raises an eyebrow like it should be obvious that he has people on retainer to find out things like this. It is infuriating how effortlessly handsome he looks in a blue button down, the sleeves rolled up so she can see the corded muscles of his forearms. Jesus, she must really be lonely if she's getting hot and bothered over some rich guy's forearms.
Suddenly feeling very exposed, Selina abandons the door to grab a cardigan from the couch and slip it on even though it's balmy in her apartment. She draws it closed and crosses her arms over her chest with a glare like she hasn't been standing around in boy shorts and a tank top for the past few minutes. Bruce Wayne swallows hard – and it's interesting how much of that cocksure attitude disappeared the moment she started putting on more clothes, as if that's when it dawned on him how little she was wearing before – and wonders if he can come in.
"Oh, are you asking first?" she says sarcastically before motioning for him to enter. He closes the door behind him, Bruce's hand still on the handle when he asks if she wants him to leave. Selina should say yes – she's not a thing he can just search for on Amazon and have – but there is something intriguing about his presence in her apartment right now that causes her to shrug instead. "I'm amazed that you haven't broken out into hives being this far from home. The East End must be like Mars to someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
Having acclimated to the light, Selina lifts the sunglasses so that they're perched atop her head. She is definitely not returning these.
"Wayne Manor has its own zip code, doesn't it?"
Bruce flinches. "You read The Gotham Times article then?"
"I perused it," she lies.
Two days ago, Gotham's premiere newspaper posted an in-depth analysis on the Wayne fortune and the clusterfuck propagated by decades of ignoring what was really happening with Thomas Wayne's Renewal Project. The team of financial journalists determined that, despite giving more than half of his money away to charity and rebuilding efforts over the past few months, Bruce Wayne still made more daily than most people earn in a year. In fact, Q3 projections are so promising for Wayne Enterprises that it looks like he'll double his fortune by the fourth quarter if there's not another flood to shut down Wall Street for a week.
"It's a crutch," Bruce admits with so much sincerity that Selina almost can't hold it against him that he's richer than most nations. As his body sags down into one of her breakfast stools, there is a part of her that believes he'd give it all up if it meant some peace for his father's legacy. "I don't even care about the money."
"Only because you have it," Selina reminds him with an expert eye roll. It is exhausting to talk about money with someone who has never had to worry about it. He can act like the trust fund doesn't matter, but they're not orphans in the same way and to pretend differently is laughable at best and infuriating at worst.
Bruce wears a concentrated frown like figuring out the moral implications of his wealth is a particularly impossible math equation in which he can't solve for X no matter how hard he tries. At that moment, he looks so sad that Selina wishes she had never brought it up in the first place. Eager to get back to when he was a flirty and welcome unwelcome distraction, Selina bumps her shoulder against his and asks where he was planning to take her to brunch.
He rubs the back of his neck and admits that he hadn't thought that far ahead. "But we can go wherever you want."
"Paris," she says facetiously.
"It's technically lunchtime there, but if we leave now, we could make it for dinner at the Eiffel Tower." For a moment, she is horrified that he's serious but then he breaks into an obnoxious grin. Rolling her eyes, she tosses Bruce a can of tuna and tells him to feed her cats while she changes.
After a beat, she asks, "You know how to use a can opener, right?"
*
"You can stop lurking," Vengeance says on the rooftop of the GCPD once Gordon leaves. Selina steps out of the shadows mildly irritated. She had been convinced this time that he didn't know she was there but given his love of surveillance, he's probably got cameras in those pointy bat ears that are recording from all angles. "How would you get into this place?"
"The old Gotham Opera House has skylights," she says vaguely, knowing that he's probably already mapped out seven different ways to get into The Iceberg Lounge's new location. "How'd you know I was here?"
"There's a loose brick to your right. I heard it move when you climbed up."
"Perceptive," she whistles before suggesting, "I could slip on the contacts and do recon again."
Vengeance shakes his head. "I doubt Carmine Falcone's daughter would receive a warm welcome from The Penguin."
"I should. He's funding his empire with my inheritance," Selina says bitterly. She doesn't want any more of her father's blood money, but she doesn't want a scumbag like Oz to benefit from it either. If Selina had her way, she would've created a pyre with the loot and then tossed Falcone's body on the flames as catharsis.
"I'll figure something out," Vengeance promises. She thinks he's going to drop off the edge like he usually does but instead he turns around and asks, "Why are you hanging around Bruce Wayne?"
It's so unexpected that Selina has to laugh.
"Rich, handsome, and kind of funny in a self-deprecating way? Why would anyone want to be around such a monster?"
"I thought you hated the Waynes."
"It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind." Selina beams as she advances towards The Bat, who looks like he's ready to pitch himself off the roof at a moment's notice. They are a breath apart when she finally asks, "Should I be flattered that you've been checking up on me, V?"
"I wanted to make sure you were safe."
Vengeance makes the mistake of glancing down at her mouth for a second too long because the next thing she knows, Selina is muttering against his lips, "I told you, baby. I can take care of myself." Every other time, Selina is the one initiating while Vengeance stops her before they can violate any public decency laws, but this time when she leans in for a kiss, he unexpectedly pulls her flush against him and kisses back. Selina smiles against his mouth and tells Vengeance there's a participation trophy in his future if he keeps this up.
*
"Has he been sitting in the car this whole time?" Selina asks, smacking Bruce's chest in disbelief as he leads them to the Rolls across the street from Wayne Tower. "Did you at least crack open a window?"
"He's not a dog!" Bruce exclaims with an eye roll. "Besides, he's listening to a podcast about German U-boats."
Against her better judgment, Selina had agreed to meet Bruce for drinks. He had been a sport about going to the little hole in the wall diner a few blocks away from her apartment for that first brunch, slipping into a booth at the back like that made a rich boy with a villa in Tuscany stick out any less. He might as well have been wearing boating shoes given the odd looks from the regulars, but Bruce was unfailingly polite to everyone, including the waitress who managed to screw up nearly every aspect of the least obtrusive breakfast order a person could make. Selina figured that she owed him a better meal for putting up with that alone, but she'd had every intention of letting him blow in the wind for a bit longer until she saw the breaking news on GNN that Bruce Wayne had ousted nearly everyone on his board for spending years ignoring the corrupt practices in his company while lining their pockets with money meant for The Renewal Project. Bruce must've called her soon after the meeting because he sounded so tired that Selina didn't even make him talk her into it.
In retrospect, she should've just taken a raincheck because their drink date was a disaster. He was already mid-sulk when she arrived and there was only so much talking to herself that Selina was inclined to do before calling the night a wash. And all of that was before the day trader who was already three sheets to the wind tossed a vodka tonic in Bruce's face and started shouting that it wasn't fair that the Waynes – here Bruce winced because there was no plural left – kept getting richer while the rest of them were hemorrhaging their souls just trying stay afloat. Bruce stood there with his jaw set and let the guy take his frustrations out on him, stubby fingers poking Bruce in the chest while the man kept drunkenly shouting, "What makes you so special, buddy?" Security finally made their way through the restaurant to the bar to haul the wino away, but when they asked if he wanted to press charges, Bruce just shook his head, handed them a wad of cash, and asked them to make sure the guy made it home safely.
"Does that happen a lot to you?" Selina asked once they took him away. He didn't seem the least bit surprised.
"It's…not the first time. He's right though."
"He's drunk."
Bruce shrugged. "I should've paid more attention to what they were doing in my family's name. They depended on me and I let them down. Not the first time for that either."
"Bruce…"
"This was a bad idea," he said apologetically, vague enough that this could've been anything at all. "I shouldn't have called and wasted your time."
"Good thing I'm going to let you make it up to me by giving me a tour of Wayne Manor," Selina had replied before dragging him out the door.
She tilts her head now to get a better glance at him as they wait for the cars to pass before crossing the street. To the outside world, he looks like Bruce Wayne, dude bro billionaire destroying his company because he doesn't understand how the real world works but so unbothered by it that he might as well be thinking about his fantasy football league right now. But Selina is close enough to see his furrowed brow and the way he flexes his fingers against the side of his leg like it is taking monumental effort to hold himself pin straight while the repercussions of his actions, no matter how justified, weigh him down like cement blocks.
"You okay?" Selina asks as she runs her nails along the hair at the back of his head. Bruce's shoulders relax so that they're no longer up near his ears as he lets out a long sigh. He allows himself to lean into her touch for a fraction of a second, like a big cat in an Armani suit, before the signal turns to walk and Selina loops her arm through his and tugs at him to get a move on.
Bruce raps his knuckles on the driver's side window when they get to the car. At once, a blast of cold air hits them when the sharply dressed man inside opens the door and steps out. "Selina, this is Alfred."
"Miss Kyle," Alfred greets with a nod. "Master Bruce has spoken highly of you."
"Master Bruce?" Selina feels a migraine coming on. Of course, Bruce Wayne would be a classist prick! Just as she was starting to feel a fondness towards him, Selina is going to have to lecture him on how being born into privilege doesn't mean he has to adhere to outdated hierarchical societal constructs like he's the actual prince of Gotham.
"He only pulls out that gem when he wants me to die of embarrassment," Bruce groans before turning back to his butler with a frown. The British man's face breaks out into a cheesy grin and Selina feels like she can breathe again.
"But you so rarely have company, my boy," Alfred laughs affably as he holds open the door to the back seat for them.
Obviously, that's a lie. Bruce Wayne's roster of supermodels, actresses, and extremely flexible dancers has been well documented in the societal pages, a new one being added with each party. If anything, there's not a single picture of Bruce Wayne at an event over the last two months without at least a few attractive women hanging onto his every word.
"What about his harem of nameless cup sizes?"
The tips of Bruce's ears turn scarlet and he looks like he might actually die from mortification when he mumbles that they have names.
"Like Bambi and Candi…" she starts as she ducks inside the car. Bruce practically dives into the backseat after her and slams the door closed behind him just as Alfred looks like he is about to add something illuminating. Selina laughs when Bruce sinks into his seat miserably and loosens his tie. "I am all for you showing those ladies a good time, Bruce."
"I'd hardly call a museum benefit a good time," he groans, "but you can prove me wrong at the Gotham Natural History Museum's annual fundraising gala in two weeks."
Selina whistles. "Very smooth, Mr. Wayne." Bruce grins, the first real smile she's gotten out of him all evening.
For his part, Alfred manages to get them out to Wayne Manor during rush hour traffic in under half an hour. The mansion looks different when it's not done up for party guests, shadows dancing eerily over the high ceilings in shuttered rooms like spirits biding their time until they'll be released from this mausoleum of a home. In a place this huge, Selina expects there to be a thick layer of dust over everything, but Alfred is clearly excellent at his job because she can practically see her reflection on the marble floors when they walk in. Bruce leaves to change out of his booze-soaked shirt while Alfred shows her to the den. The moment they walk in, Selina feels like the wind has been knocked out of her as she comes face to face with a massive portrait of the Wayne family hanging over the fireplace. Thomas and Bruce Wayne are wearing identical three-piece suits with maroon ties that match Martha Wayne's silk dress. Everyone is smiling so widely that it threatens to split their faces, at once heartwarming and heartbreaking when one considers what is to come. She can't imagine the Bruce in the picture growing up to be the man she knows now, the carefree glimmer in the eyes of the miniature version all but extinguished in the wake of tragedy.
Alfred stands next to Selina and says, "Mr. Wayne didn't think it did justice to Mrs. Wayne's smile…"
"Because there wasn't a paintbrush fine enough in existence to be up to the task. My mother, on the other hand, said that the artist gave my father a very generous edit," Bruce finishes from the doorway, a smile tugging at his lips like Alfred has told him this story hundreds of times before.
The butler excuses himself to finish getting dinner ready, frowning at Bruce's outfit change before he leaves. Selina can hear him hiss, "Sweatpants, Bruce? Honestly, why do I even bother?" on his way out.
With Alfred gone, the room is silent once more. For lack of anything better to say, Selina blurts out, "You were a cute kid."
"Some would argue that I'm also a cute adult."
"But probably not when you're fishing for compliments," Selina smirks as she turns around to face him. Bruce looks more relaxed than he did in the restaurant, but there's still something a little haunted in his eyes that Selina can't quite place. She edges a little closer so she can reach out and stroke his hair. It's as soft as Isis' fur was when she was a kitten. Bruce closes his eyes and hums unapologetically like a touch-starved stray and Selina can feel her heart breaking in real time. He must sense the minute shift in the atmosphere too because immediately his eyes snap open and he gets self-conscious. Taking a step back, Bruce tells Selina they can start the tour of the mansion if she's still up for it.
He takes her to his father's library first, the shelves lined with medical textbooks on one wall and thick volumes ranging from Walt Whitman to Homer on the others. He admits that he doesn't come to this room much – "I don't really need to reference poetry a lot" – but tells her about how his father would sit here on his post-call nights smoking a pipe and calming his mind by reading Wordsworth out loud in front of the fire. Selina doesn't have to touch it to know that one of the far shelves in the right side of the room is a façade, undoubtedly cloaking a safe or hidden door. Without meaning to, her eyes flit around the room looking for surveillance cameras. She can't spot anything obvious, but Bruce Wayne is rich enough to have nanotech fit into the crown molding for all she knows. It certainly would be a fun challenge.
Next, he ushers her into a smaller office nearby. Bruce looks a little gutted as if he makes it a point not to enter this room either. The oak desk in the center of the room shines like a homing beacon, ink vials and fancy pens fixed in time as if trapped in amber. There's a placard in gold that reads DR. THOMAS WAYNE, MD. Bruce runs the pad of his index finger over the edge before jerking his hand back like it's been sliced open.
"How many rooms does this place have anyway?" Selina asks, careful to keep her voice light as she pulls him back into the hallway.
"A lot."
"I think I get the point," she says. Bruce nods before swallowing hard as Selina crowds him against an empty wall. "Lots of dens, lots of books. Antique furniture, Persian rugs, a Seurat in the mud room. Am I missing anything?"
She hooks her arms around the nape of his neck and leans in until she can feel his breath hot against her skin. As if by instinct, his hands go to her waist and then stall there like he's not sure if he should pull her in or push her away.
"There's an Italian hand carved walnut dining table—"
"I don't care."
"No, I didn't think you did," he laughs before surging forward to press his lips against her own, the first indication that he's alive in this house full of ghosts. Much to her audible dissatisfaction, Bruce stops rubbing circles against Selina's hips with his thumbs and cups her face with his hands instead as she tilts her head up to kiss him from a better angle. When Selina captures his bottom lip between her teeth and tugs, Bruce whimpers as she teeters between keeping him in place or drawing blood. She applies just a little pressure before releasing him and licking into his lip.
"Maybe you should give me a tour of your bedroom," Selina suggests while her hand bunches up in his t-shirt and he mumbles good idea against her neck. She presses her body even closer to his, Bruce knocking back against the wall just as they hear Alfred clear his throat at the end of the hallway.
"Dinner is served," Alfred announces and if there's the hint of a laugh in his voice, Selina is too embarrassed to look at him to confirm. She jumps a step back as Bruce drops his head against her shoulder with a frustrated moan, his cheeks turning redder by the second.
"Thank you so much, Alfred," he says sarcastically. Selina laughs and presses a kiss to his temple that is so tender she surprises even herself. Quickly, she disentangles herself from Bruce and pulls him towards the dining room while asking Alfred if he went full Julia Child for the occasion. The older man starts talking about the history of boeuf bourguignon excitedly while Bruce groans at Selina to stop encouraging Alfred's niche interests.
*
"Is this a social call?" Selina asks as she pads from the kitchen to the living room in bare feet. Gotham is experiencing an Indian summer and she's up to her third shower of the day. The ancient air conditioner in the corner of the room has tried valiantly to keep up with the heat, but it's asking a lot for an appliance that is almost as old as she is. The once subtle hum has now ratcheted up to the level of Jacob Marley's rattling chains, but Selina is willing to forego a restful sleep for even the slightest breeze. Outside, the air is still and humid, oppressive in a way that feels ten times worse in Gotham where everything is already trying to keep its citizens down without needing assistance from Mother Nature.
Vengeance can be a surprisingly silent presence when he wants to be, but Selina would know the jiggling of her rickety window latches anywhere. He steps into the triangle of light coming from the only floor lamp she has on, produces a couple of glossy pictures from somewhere on his person, and tosses them on the coffee table between them.
"Do any of these guys work for The Penguin?"
"Shop talk from The Bat," Selina proclaims with an exaggerated yawn. "How surprising!"
Vengeance shifts uncomfortably from one foot to another. The silence stretches between them like a rubber band that's about to break. With a sigh, she drops down onto her couch and picks up the print outs from his contact lens footage. All the men are in the same category of scummy bottom-feeder but none of them stand out as being particularly memorable until she gets to the last image.
"That's Pauly. Used to run drugs out of Park Row for Falcone. Didn't seem particularly loyal. If Ozzy's the big cheese now, I'm sure Pauly's kissing the ring."
She stands up with a stretch and hands the pictures back to Vengeance. Selina can feel the heat radiating from his body in waves, yet only a single bead of sweat trickles down from beneath the cowl. She's not sure how he's still standing when just looking at him in twenty pounds of Kevlar while it's eighty-five degrees outside makes her feel like she is going to pass out.
"You should take some of this off before you overheat," Selina says, ever the concerned citizen as she steps closer to him and puts a hand on his chest plate. This is certainly not going to help the heat situation for either one of them, but Selina has never seen a flame that she hasn't wanted to pass her hand through.
"You need a better air conditioner."
"I need a better apartment."
"Maybe Bruce Wayne can help you out."
Selina can't help the Cheshire cat grin that spreads across her face when she rises on tiptoes and whispers in his ear, "You sound jealous, Vengeance."
"You trying to make me jealous, Selina?"
"Depends on if it's working," Selina replies with a chuckle. "You really don't like sharing your toys, do you?"
"Depends on the toy," he says humorlessly. "But in this case, what you do with Wayne has nothing to do with me."
"Yet here you are in my apartment, seething with envy," Selina snickers. She kicks off her back foot and tips precariously into his space, her fingers wrapping around his ridiculous Kevlar collar before she purrs, "There are a lot more interesting ways to work up a sweat than standing around talking, Vengeance."
Selina leans forward and licks a straight line from his chin up to the top of his lip. For a moment, it seems like Vengeance loses whatever internal argument he is having with himself and is finally about to kiss her first, but he pulls back at the last minute like she's a bomb about to go off.
"Thanks for the intel," he mumbles stupidly like this was a business meeting. Vengeance crosses to the windows in two strides and disappears into the pitch-black night a second later, leaving Selina overheated and in need of another shower.
*
Dating Bruce Wayne is an impossible task for anyone who isn't keen on feeling like a zoo animal to be gawked at by the general population, but it's certainly not ideal for someone who is in the business of applying a very liberal definition to the term finder's keepers. She has never met anyone who has unintentionally pulled as much attention while simultaneously wanting to be a wallflower as Bruce Wayne.
"What the hell is that?" Selina asks when the car pulls up to the museum event and the sign out front announces that Bruce Wayne is the special guest this evening.
"Alfred does the RSVPs. I had no idea," Bruce apologizes. It explains why Alfred insisted on Gustave chauffeuring them to the gala tonight. God, Selina really needs to pick up some pointers on how to be as effortlessly chaotic as that man. "I thought the guest of honor was natural history!"
It's such a dumb thing to say but Bruce is so serious about it that she has no doubt he expected to walk into The Hall of Ocean Life and see the giant orca model that hangs from the ceiling wearing a top hat and a tuxedo for the event. In that moment, Selina finds him so hopelessly irresistible that she hits the door lock button a second before Gustave can open it to the throngs of reporters and spectators waiting to pop the bubble they are still in.
"It's okay if you have changed your mind—"
The handle jiggles from outside briefly when she pounces on Bruce. One of her hands cards through his hair and the other tugs at his bow tie while she kisses the frown off his stupid face until they're a breathless tangle of limbs in the suddenly cramped back seat of the town car. When she pulls back, Bruce immediately hinges forward like he's powerless against the gravitational pull of Selina's orbit, two celestial bodies destined to circle around each other for eternity.
"Can we go home now?" he asks desperately, but Selina just shakes her head with a laugh.
"We have to save the dinosaurs, baby," she says with faux seriousness as she wipes the lipstick from his mouth.
"I think we're a little too late for that. They'd want us to move on."
"Think of all the class trips that are depending on you, Bruce," Selina implores weakly as his lips zero in on the hollow behind her right ear that he has recently discovered drives her crazy.
"They can watch Jurassic Park."
It's a struggle, but Selina manages to think through the haze of how relaxed his mouth makes her feel and shove him away before she has a hickey that she can't explain to elderly socialites without scandalizing them.
"We have to go," Selina sighs like it's a civic duty while she straightens his tie. "They're probably waiting for you to bang a gong to get the festivities started."
After one last check of her own face in the mirror, Selina hits the button to open the doors and knocks on the tinted window to let Gustave know they're ready. As soon as he opens the door, there's an explosion of flash bulbs and chatter as people start shouting questions at her about who designed her dress, how she met Bruce, whether this relationship is serious. Selina's not one to back down from a challenge, but this feels like so much all at once that she kicks herself for not letting him talk her out of it before she feels Bruce's warm hand at her back and hears him whisper into her ear, "Ignore them. Just smile and put one foot in front of the other." Selina nods and reaches for Gustave's offered arm as he helps her out of the car. Bruce exits a second later, his hand immediately finding hers to give it a squeeze. By now, Selina's eyes have adjusted to the flashes going off like haphazard firecrackers. When she turns to him, Bruce is wearing that frat boy grin that he puts on every time he's out in public. She used to think he was such a selfish moron because of that look, a golden boy with no worries because his parachutes had parachutes. But she had no idea until now what it felt like to stand still while strangers tried to see through his skin to sell more papers.
"Honey?" Bruce asks softly out of the corner of his mouth.
Selina takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and plasters on her own fake smile. This is just like The Iceberg Lounge except with less neon and more shouting. She can do this. Selina curls one arm around his waist before tucking herself against him, her other hand resting on his lapel as she poses for the camera. His hand immediately goes to the small of her back, the crowd going crazy over the backless dress and their brilliant smiles and the way she gets on her tiptoes to whisper into his ear, "Let's really give them something to talk about," before turning his face to her and kissing him.
After that, the remainder of the evening is a relative cakewalk. Bruce seems a little bit more at ease now that he's confident she won't run for the hills and Selina can take it all in stride knowing that they're both in on the same con. Unfortunately, he is correct that museum galas are largely uninteresting affairs, the conversation revolving around yachts and stock portfolios and mergers that she couldn't care less about if she tried. Selina quickly realizes that it's really boring to attend a fancy party if the objective isn't to see how many affluent heiresses she can liberate of their ornate jewelry. She briefly considers taking a sapphire necklace off someone the others keep referring to as The Countess but decides to keep her word to Bruce that she's going to be good for the rest of the night and drinks her champagne in silence instead.
There are unfortunately no gongs, but the director of the museum does call Bruce up to the stage to say a few words about what inspired him to make such a generous donation to their institution. Selina recognizes the panic that momentarily flits across his features before Bruce Wayne leans into the microphone like he's about to drop some profound words of wisdom and says, "We have to think about the dinosaurs, Chuck."
Her un-ladylike chortle gets a few glares from the people around her, but Bruce winks at her from the stage before flashing a megawatt smile for the cameras, patting the confused host on the back, and walking off the podium to a round of scattered applause. While Chuck starts talking about their exciting new plans for the museum's grand reopening, Bruce crosses with purpose from the front of the grand room to where Selina is standing in the middle, not breaking his stride even as people try to intercept him to lie about their newfound passion for fossil preservation.
"I don't think they'll be making you a special guest again," Selina laughs when he reaches her.
"I'm telling Alfred you were my speechwriter," Bruce says with a grin. He's practically dancing on the balls of his feet when he asks if she wants to get out of here. "They're going to expect me to be some sort of paleontologist during the dinner and a plate of overcooked salmon is not worth all that."
"I could go for a burger," Selina acquiesces, falling in step with him as they head towards the exit. The other partygoers watch their departure with unhealthy interest while Chuck blathers on about the preservation of aboriginal dioramas. The crowd has stopped paying attention, their hushed whispers getting a little louder as Selina and Bruce pass pockets of gossiping onlookers. Selina knows undoubtedly that stories about a make up, a breakup, a round of enthusiastic sex in the back of his town car – maybe even all three depending on which lips are the loosest – will find a home in Page Six tomorrow morning.
"Alfred is going to think I'm a terrible influence," Selina pouts while Bruce reminds her that the guy is just ecstatic that he's spending enough time with another human being to be influenced at all. Selina wants to ask him about what he did during the years that he shunned the rest of the world, but he always drops these nuggets at the worst times. Knowing Bruce, it's probably on purpose so she can't ask a follow up question. If Bruce Wayne were any suaver, he'd be insufferable.
*
"Do not give me shit about this, V. A person cannot walk through life calling herself The Countess and expect not to get robbed."
For the first time since she has known him, Vengeance does not take the moral high road and shrugs that The Countess was involved in a Ponzi scheme five years ago that stole the pensions of at least a hundred blue collar factory workers and left them with bad loans. Selina is surprised that The Bat is using an eye for an eye to justify her actions, but given what he does every night, she supposes it's like asking the pot not to call the kettle black.
Unfortunately, The Countess' safe did not prove to be a challenge and her security was a joke. Selina feels like she's a livewire with an abundance of energy and no outlet to discharge it. She was gearing up for a fight with Vengeance, but it figures that the one time she needs him to be a stick in the mud, he's distracted with the crime of a bunch of lowlifes having a good time in a mob hangout.
"I don't get it," Vengeance finally says. "It's not like you need the money."
"Sometimes a girl's got a little itch she needs to scratch," Selina says with waggling eyebrows. "And sometimes a girl's got to pay the rent."
"You're paid up for the year," he says absently. Selina had used some of Carmine's money to make sure she had some stability, but that doesn't make it any less creepy that he knows that. Before she can tell him as much, The Bat explains, "I was curious."
"Pretty sure that killed the cat."
"Good thing I'm not a cat."
*
Selina has her feet in Bruce's lap as she reads through the speech he is planning to give at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Thomas and Martha Wayne wing at Gotham Children's Hospital next week. Bruce is watching the mayoral debate on television while he digs his thumb into the arch of her foot, resulting in a wonderful sensation shooting through her as he kneads deeper.
"Where did a rich kid learn how to do this?" Selina groans, her task forgotten as he chips away at her stress with his hands.
"Hidden talent."
"What else can those fingers do?" Selina asks before she knows she's asked it. Bruce raises an eyebrow and suddenly the room is charged with a very different type of energy. He turns the television off before his other hand leaves her ankle and ventures up her calf. He is moving so slowly when all she wants is for Bruce to tear off her shorts, slide his hand up her legs, and press his fingers inside until he can play her like a fiddle. There are only so many hints a woman can drop before she needs to take matters into her own hands.
With a sigh, Selina pulls Bruce down on top of her by the strings of his hoodie and captures his mouth with her own. Her kisses are borderline obscene, all tongue and teeth and vicious in a way that feels like she's ready to draw blood but gentle enough that she never actually does. If Selina had planned any of this, it would be happening on his gigantic four-poster bed instead of Bruce being all limbs on her entirely too small couch. Still, there are some advantages to close proximity. When her knee brushes against him, Bruce's hips jackknife as she swallows down his moan and fumbles for his belt.
"Wait," he says, panting by the time they break apart. "I have something to tell you."
"You want to talk?" Selina asks disbelievingly as she sits up from under him with a shake of her head. "Right now? Baby, it's not good timing."
Selina tries to pull him back, but Bruce won't be deterred. His newfound determination is extremely annoying because suddenly he's jumping to his feet and putting more distance between them which is counterintuitive to her plans. With a groan, Selina gets off the couch too as Bruce runs a hand through his hair and starts pacing back and forth in a tight line.
"Bruce, come here," she says softly, extending her hand to him. He stops pacing and lets her pull him closer until they are standing face to face. "You're freaking out."
"I'm Batman."
Selina smirks and leans in close. "Is this a kinky roleplay thing? In that case, I'm Jessica Rabbit."
"No that's not…wait, Jessica Rabbit? Like the cartoon?"
"She was the first person I could think of! Don't kink shame me!" she says defensively, giving him a hard shove. "Now let's get back to—"
"Selina, this is not a roleplay thing," he deadpans. Selina rolls her eyes, but before she can tell him that he's very bad at this game, Bruce grabs her hands, leans in close, and whispers into her ear, "I may have lied about the horribly scarred thing."
Her eyes go so wide at the admission that she must look like a cartoon character as she staggers backwards and hisses, "Oh my God! Oh my God?"
Selina feels like she is crouched in front of an uncrackable safe where none of the ticks correspond to the correct combination of numbers and every failed attempt resets her progress. Her brain short circuits each time it thinks it has grasped the notion that the guy who let some belligerent stockbroker shout in his face for five minutes is the same guy who nearly beat one of The Riddler's followers to death with his bare fists on top of the scaffolding at The Garden. Bruce is a well-intentioned doofus who knows what the right thing to do is even if he has no idea how to get there. Vengeance is danger couched in a pathological need to do what's right even when it means messing everything up in the process. In some ways, maybe that's what makes them the same person: two do-gooders with vastly different approaches.
"Now who's freaking out?" he smirks. Off her glare, Bruce quickly shuts up.
"That's not…" Selina closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. Breathe in, breathe out. She should've paid more attention during that yoga class. Surely, there's a sun salutation or lotus position that would help dampen the anger coursing through her veins right now. "Why wouldn't you tell me sooner?"
"It's not something you just blurt out."
"How were you going to explain the scars?" Selina asks incredulously. "Or did you think we were just never going to have sex?"
Bruce blushes, rubbing the back of his neck as he mumbles something about how it would probably be dark.
"Not sensory deprivation tank dark!"
Selina is not sure why, out of all the reasons she has for being justifiably homicidal right now, this is the one that she has decided to pour all her rage into: his sheer stupidity in thinking that he could date her and indefinitely hide no less than two bullet wounds that she has personally witnessed The Bat get in real time. Apparently, Bruce's solution is to tell her about the time he was with Miss February in Vale and explained away a couple of knife wounds by telling her he'd gotten banged up while free soloing with Alex Honnold. "It's amazing the things people will believe if you drop the right name," he marvels.
"I know you're not telling me a quaint little story about another woman you were sleeping with right now."
"No," he quickly says, drawing out the o like he's in an 80s sitcom with an accompanying laugh track. Her eyes must be shooting daggers because Bruce raises his hands and literally takes a giant step back. Her IKEA bookshelf rattles when he bumps against it – she never got around to properly securing it to the wall so, at any moment, he's probably going to get beaned with that horticulture book Pamela gave her – but Bruce doesn't seem to notice the impending danger when he offers, "It wasn't serious if that helps."
"It doesn't." At that exact moment, Isis brushes against her legs, purring softly as Selina picks her up and presses her cheek into the soft black fur until her heart rate comes down from the red zone.
"I could be upset too, you know," Bruce shoots back audaciously, seemingly unaware of the mental gymnastics that it would take to make that statement true. Her eyes snap open and Isis quickly jumps out of her hands as if even she can sense that Selina is about to go radioactive. There is simply no version of this conversation where he can get mad at her about anything, but Selina motions for Bruce to continue digging anyway. "I mean, it's not like you stopped kissing Batman after you started dating me."
"Apparently, I was still kissing you, asshole!" Selina shouts, grabbing the glass bowl she uses for her keys from the coffee table and launching it at Bruce. Her throw is comically wide, missing his head by at least five feet as it smashes to pieces against a wall.
"Technically, you didn't know that."
"It takes two to tango, buddy!" she exclaims even though she doesn't owe him any explanations. "And I felt deeply conflicted about it!"
"Sure," he scoffs.
"Don't make me feel bad because of a technicality," Selina bites back. At least he has the decency to look chagrined. "The only reason I didn't know, Bruce, is because you chose not to tell me."
It feels like all the energy has drained from her body as she drops onto the couch and draws her knees up to her chest. Once she rests her head on the knobby bone and shuts her eyes, Selina can feel a migraine starting, the mushroom cloud of pain extending out from the center of her forehead like an impending storm. She needs Advil and a stiff drink. She needs answers. She wants to dive under her blankets and emerge only once the world makes sense again.
"I'm telling you now," he says, startling Selina with how close his voice sounds. At some point, he must've moved from the bookshelf because when Selina cracks open an eye, Bruce is kneeling in front of her like a Tibetan monk praying for forgiveness. She had forgotten how tall he was, the two of them face to face now even with her sitting on the couch.
"Only because you wanted to get laid," she frowns.
Her traitorous stomach does a little flip when the corner of his mouth ticks up into a smirk and he leans forward ever so slightly to tell her that only is a strong qualifier. Being this stupidly handsome is wasted on a man who is out there competing with the version of himself that runs around rooftops in a Kevlar suit. Her hand flattens against his cheek like it has hundreds of times before – at cocktail parties, in Wayne Manor, on the GCPD rooftop next to a beacon of him composed by the absence of light – and the moment she feels his jaw tick before he completely relaxes into her touch and lets out the smallest of breaths, Selina can't believe that she didn't figure it out sooner. There was never a benefactor – Vengeance is too much of a control freak to leave the fate of his crusade to someone else's whims and the only person who could afford Vengeance's set up is a reclusive billionaire with cash to burn and dead parent issues to work through. Selina had all the puzzle pieces in front of her and still managed to jam them into the wrong configuration somehow.
"I am so stupid!" she exclaims as she wrenches her hand back like she's been burned.
"You are not. I'm very good at hiding."
"Clearly. I don't even know you."
"Don't say that," he begs.
"Who are you?" Selina challenges. She feels a fresh wave of anger come on as she spits out, "Some privileged douchebag trying to fill the emptiness in his soul by dressing up like a bat and beating the shit out of low-level thugs?"
"Come on," Bruce winces. "You know me, Selina."
"Do you even know you?" Selina shoves him back before getting on her feet and walking towards the kitchen, desperately needing the distance if she wants to hold on to this feeling. It's a flawed plan because of course he follows her. She feels numb except for this fire in her chest that just wants to consume him until he's nothing more than ash.
"Look, you can be mad—"
Selina whips around so fast that he takes a step back to avoid getting hit by her. "Oh, can I? Thanks for the permission, Mr. Wayne."
"But it doesn't make this," Bruce motions at the space between them, "any less real. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't jeopardize the mission. It's bigger than…"
"Everything apparently," she says with a curt nod like that's that. It is only in that moment that the realization fully dawns on her. "You don't trust me." There's a harsh chuckle at the end of her words, but she's not fooling him any more than she's fooling herself. She has too much pride to ask what made him change his mind and she doesn't think she could handle watching him fumble for a reason even if she could bring herself to ask. Selina holds the front door open for him to leave and snaps, "Congratulations, Bruce. I'd say you've got the rich asshole thing down after all."
*
Her claws itch to set up another score, something more challenging than climbing in through an open window and finding an obvious hiding spot. She tells herself that she misses the threat of unknown variables, but if Selina is being honest, she probably just misses him.
*
It is very trippy to see Billionaire Playboy Bruce Wayne sitting cross-legged on the floor practicing Zen breathing techniques and knowing that hours ago he was scaling rooftops in bat ears and putting muggers in traction. There's an ice pack taped to his left shoulder and a steri-strip over the opposite eyebrow, but otherwise he looks relatively intact and, much to Selina's eternal annoyance, remains as attractive as ever. She sighs. Selina is determined to hold onto her anger and if that means ignoring the way her chest seizes up when she looks at him, then she'll make her blind spot as wide as it needs to be to get there.
"This does not work, Alfred," Bruce says, peeking with one eye only to be surprised to find her standing at the doorway instead. He rips off the ice pack and scrambles to his feet while stammering, "Hey. Hi. How are you?"
Selina is wearing the chunkiest cable knit sweater she could find in her closet for the express purpose of appearing like an amorphous cream-colored blob with legs, yet Bruce is still looking at her with so much heat in his eyes that she might as well be visiting him in her underwear. She crosses her arms over her chest and glares, hating the audible hitch in her throat that betrays her when she deadpans, "So eloquent. If the vigilante thing doesn't work out, maybe you can make the world a better place through the power of slam poetry."
"You're still mad then." An amused smile spreads across Bruce's face, which only aggravates her even more. He should be miserable and groveling, not flirty and practicing mindfulness.
"Gosh, you really are the world's greatest detective!" Selina proclaims sarcastically.
"What are you doing here?" Bruce asks, tilting his head like he is trying to solve a particularly challenging puzzle by approaching it from a different angle. He steps a little closer and it takes everything in her not to take a step back. She's not about to start doing the tango with him.
"Alfred called and said you were going to get yourself killed, but obviously you're just fine so…"
"He's worried that I've stopped pulling my punches this week," Bruce says softly as he looks down at his bandaged hands. She knows the good that Vengeance is capable of, but she has also seen the unbridled fury contained in those fists as he beat a man to within an inch of his life – for her, the little voice inside her head reminds her – so it's not completely ridiculous that Alfred would be concerned. There are lines that The Bat won't cross but he's got to be able to see them to know where they are.
"Is that why the new and improved Iceberg Lounge has been crawling with ambulances lately?" His head snaps up, but she cuts him off with an "I was in the neighborhood" before he can ask how she knows. Selina doesn't mention that she might have been hoping to catch a glimpse of him at the time. She doesn't want to be encouraging.
"Selina, you can't—"
"I know you're not trying to tell me what I can't do, Bats," she scoffs, her voice as sharp as a German carving knife. "I'm not the one with anger issues, an aversion to therapy, and a death wish."
"You sound like Alfred."
"That might have been a direct quote," Selina admits. "Anyway, I didn't come here to talk about your glorious mission."
"Oh?" He's doing the head tilting thing again.
"Stop sending me flowers. I'm tired of my crazy neighbor lecturing me about perennials getting cut down in their prime for commercialized displays of affection."
"Sorry," he says sheepishly and she thinks he's apologizing for more than the flowers. Bruce rubs the back of his neck with his hand. "You might not believe me, but it wasn't about a lack of trust. I was just scared, that's all."
"Of what?"
"Losing you," he shrugs like it should be so obvious. "I didn't want you to resent me for being The Bat or The Bat for being me. In hindsight, not the greatest plan to keep lying, but at the time it felt pretty solid. We were in a nice bubble."
"Relationships are not supposed to exist in bubbles," Selina shoots back, fuming. "You don't get to play out the whole scenario in your mind and then accept your conclusions as fact without even giving me a chance to prove you wrong."
"Is that what you want? To prove me wrong?" He looks so hopeful that it hurts her own heart a little and suddenly she just needs to leave. She's almost out the door when she hears, "Wait!"
"What?" she whips around to ask, the word infused with so much annoyance that Selina impresses even herself.
"You could've texted me about the flowers," Bruce says curiously like he's trying to work something out in his head while he takes another step towards her. "You didn't come all the way out here for that. Wearing my sweater."
She groans. Of course, it's his sweater. Standing in his not-even-remotely-relaxing meditation room, Selina now remembers the exact moment that she liberated it from his wardrobe. They were downstairs watching an old black and white film – the one and only time they had attempted to go to the movies, the paparazzi followed them in and kept using flash photography in the darkened theater until the couple a few rows in front of them begged them to leave before they ruined what was left of the first date night they'd had since their baby was born – and while nerdy paleontologist Cary Grant was busy tracking down a tiger for Katherine Hepburn on television, Selina was focused on at least rounding second base before the movie was over. She kept trying to peel layers off Bruce ("I get cold easily," he explained which she now realizes was just a very good lie to hide the fact that his body looked like the after image of a hit and run in those defensive driving videos) and he kept distracting her from her task with his stupidly talented mouth.
"I don't know what you think I came here for," Selina starts, hating that she's probably blushing judging from the twinkle in Bruce's eyes, "but you can have your sweater back."
Before Bruce can clarify that's not what he meant, she's stripping off the stupid sweater in a not exactly flirty way – maybe in a slightly flirty way – and shoving the ball of merino wool at him. Underneath it, she is wearing the rattiest old "Adopt, Don't Shop" t-shirt she owns, probably near translucent with the number of revolutions it has spent in the wash. Selina wishes Bruce would blink or something because it is very difficult to make a clean break when he is looking at her like he's in on her secrets and is giving her a chance to spill before he tortures it out of her. Selina's the one with the cat ears – she refuses to be the mouse in this scenario.
"Take the fucking sweater, Bruce," she demands.
"I don't want the sweater." He shakes his head and his voice is so low that she can practically hear gravel in it. "It looks better on you."
"Everything looks better on me," Selina says smugly, rolling her eyes.
The contested sweater crushes against his chest as Bruce chooses that exact moment to shift the rest of the way into her personal space. He ducks his head down and sighs her name like a Byronic hero with a secret. It is too much when Selina is already struggling to hold on to the last vestiges of her righteous indignation like it has ever gotten her anywhere good. By the time he whispers against her ear that he misses her, it's a lost cause. There is not a single part of her that does not want him even as Bruce warns her that the risks of being around him have no real payoff.
"Stop," she orders, the sweater falling to the ground as Selina trades it for the ability to tug him closer to her by his t-shirt. "You're exceptionally bad at this."
"I know," Bruce agrees, deflating a little. He starts to pull back because of course he's so oblivious to all the ways that he's a total catch that he would think she's saying no. Selina briefly considers letting him believe it – she could still walk away from this with her pride intact – but she's clearly got it as bad for him as he has for her so what would be the point? So they could both be miserable? Selina wants so much to take him apart inch by inch to figure out how he works, to chart his body with her own until she can trust that he is all there.
"Probably could've led with how much you missed me," Selina suggests as she presses her lips against his quickening pulse.
"Good note," he grins. His fingers splay out across the small of her back, the pad of each finger generating a tiny point of heat against her skin. Bruce ducks down until his forehead is touching hers and asks, "Did you miss me?"
"Maybe."
When Selina finally kisses him, it's so unhurried that time itself seems to slow down while the world narrows down to the two of them. God, she had forgotten just how good Bruce was at kissing in the week that she spent trying not to think about him; Selina immediately congratulates herself on making the excellent choice to go with making out over quietly stewing forever. Her reasons to stay mad seem to matter a lot less when she's getting goosebumps from the feeling of his stubble against her skin alone. She did miss him, but she's never going to tell him that.
"Hi," he breathes, pulling back to look at her. "Where'd you go just now?"
She presses her palm against the top half of his face before taking it away and asking, "Which one is the real you?"
"I don't know. Both? Neither?" Then, with just the slightest hint of fear: "Do you have a preference?"
Selina frames Bruce's face with both of her hands while her thumbs trace his familiar jaw. She wants to memorize the way he looks right now without the cowl or the feigned stupidity, just as Bruce. "This guy is not too bad."
Bruce smiles before nearly tripping over the abandoned sweater on the ground as they stumble backwards until he's got her pressed against the nearest wall. His mouth trails across her clavicle and works its way up to suck a hickey into her neck that is going to be a pain to cover up in the morning, but what he's doing feels so good that Selina doesn't even bother with her half-hearted protest. When her nails scrape lazily against the drawstring knot of his sweatpants, she can feel his abdominal muscles jump. It is so surprising when Bruce's hands go to her ass that she'd laugh if she wasn't so turned on. Selina's legs hook around his hips as he sandwiches her between the wall and his solid body.
"Hold on," Selina pants as she taps him with her foot to put her down. Begrudgingly, Bruce takes a step back but keeps his hands at her waist as she finds her balance on her feet again. He stands there breathing heavily and waiting for her cue. Selina loves when he gets like this: compliant, boneless, pliable. She presses a palm flat against his chest like she's worried he will disappear if she's not touching him and asks, "Where's that big bed of yours, baby?"
Bruce points down the hall as if she doesn't already know that. Then, breathlessly: "Are you sure about this?"
This is the only thing she is sure of. She briefly tugs on the front of his shirt to follow her before walking off in that direction, pulling her t-shirt over her head and tossing it behind her as she goes. In retrospect, if she had known the night would go this way, she would've worn a sexier bra. "Fuck," she hears Bruce hiss before he rushes to come up behind her. Clearly, he has no problem with her choice of underwear as Bruce guides her into his bedroom while kissing along the top of her spine.
Once they're inside the room, Bruce moans her name as she palms his crotch before shoving him backwards onto the bed and crawling on top of him. He sits up so slowly to cross the distance between them that Selina thinks her body might short circuit by the time his lips reach hers. Taking matters into her own hands, she hooks her arms around his neck and presses down to do away with the gap between them until she is close enough to suck his bottom lip between her teeth. Bruce tastes like minty toothpaste.
"Keeping banker's hours?"
"Huh?" Bruce asks, aroused and out of breath. His nimble fingers continue unbuttoning her jeans to drag them down her hips as Selina laughs into his neck that it's barely nine. His cheeks go red as he mumbles something about an explosion at a cryogenics lab last night that kept him out late.
"Do you need a nap, baby?" she teases as she starts to get off him. "I could go."
"Don't you dare," he warns, his pupils blown.
"My neighbor thinks this relationship is a bad idea. She says there's a power imbalance."
She expects him to be horrified, but Bruce just smirks and says, "You talked to the plant lady about me?"
"Don't let it go to your head. I talked about Oprah and Stedman's relationship for an hour before that. You're not special."
Bruce knows exactly what he is doing when he whispers, "I'm a little special," in her ear. Selina wants, and she wants, and she wants as her hips move of their own accord to create friction against his tented sweats. Her own pants are halfway down her legs when Bruce manages to ease his fingers between her heated skin and her underwear to find her practically drenched. He looks so smug when he raises an eyebrow and adds, "Or maybe a lot special."
"Fuck off," she says, biting back a grin.
"Really making a concerted effort," he replies while his fingers drive her to distraction. It takes all her energy to keep from sinking into him as her traitorous mouth moans his name. Selina already knows that he will never let her live it down, but it is also in that moment when she is caught off guard that he flips them over so that he's on top.
"For the record, she's right," Bruce starts, his mouth dipping down to her neck until his lips find her pulse point. "I'm a mess around you so you are the one with all the power."
"I'll try not to let it go to my head," Selina grins.
"In the spirit of full disclosure, Alfred thinks you're great for me, but that you can do a lot better."
"That's because I can," she brags, clearly delighted that he has been discussing her with the only person whose opinion seems to matter to him. She gasps as his calloused fingers hit a particularly sensitive spot. "I'm…only…biding my time."
Selina squeals with joy when Bruce grunts, "Guess I better make myself indispensable then," before using his unoccupied hand to pull her pants off the rest of the way. Bruce kisses down her body before holding her legs open so that her thighs don't clap against his head when he finally uses the flat of his tongue to lick up into her with an abundance of patience that Selina wasn't aware he possessed.
"Bruce," she whines as he takes his sweet time while she feels like she's a rocket burning up on reentry. The vowels of his name stick in her throat as she scratches at his scalp to get him to go faster. His stubble grazing her inner thigh is what does it for her as she frantically pushes against the razor's edge of his rhythmic jaw until he finally gets her off.
She growls, "Get up here," as she tugs on Bruce's disheveled hair to get him to stretch over her. Selina cruelly arches her body up against his and groans that he is not nearly naked enough, testing Bruce's restraint until he gets off her long enough to take off his pants. He is so distracted by the brief sight of her licking her lips that he can barely roll on the condom. Selina pushes him back onto the bed with a laugh. She slips both hands under the t-shirt that he's still inexplicably wearing, the pads of her fingers fluttering over the jumping skin of his lean body and flitting upwards. His t-shirt bunches up in her hands as she tries to kiss every exposed inch of him until he finally tosses it somewhere in the vicinity of the rest of their clothes so they're on even ground now.
"Oh my God," she gasps as she looks at his battered torso. Her hands ghost over the bruises along his ribs like he's a living Rothko painting. When she sees the hieroglyphic canvas of scars scattered over his chest, her heart constricts. "They don't deserve you."
He sits up and wraps his arms around her before soothingly humming, "Hey, it's okay. I heal fast." Bruce takes her palm and presses it against three faint parallel lines crossing over from his left side. "Remember this?" Selina trails her fingertips over the shadow of their first meeting in Mitchell's office and kisses I'm sorry repeatedly into his skin with her lips.
"I want you so much," he confesses as if she can't feel how hard he is against her thigh already. There is a sharp intake of breath as Bruce's heart rate speeds up when she wraps her palm around him and strokes a few times before grinding down on him. He groans when she stills for one long moment to get accustomed to him before she starts moving so slowly that she knows Bruce would have already flipped them over and fucked her into the mattress if she didn't have his wrists pinned down. Turnabout is fair play, but he seems to have no problem begging for it – please please please please – until she relents and frees his hands only to have him press his thumb to her clit so that Selina's body clenches around him and speeds up like she's just been hit with a jolt of electricity. Bruce swallows her moans and drives his hips into her to keep up with her punishing rhythm until she's scrambling to grab at his shoulders and drag him up for a sloppy kiss as they both fall to pieces.
"You've been holding out on me," Selina marvels out of breath as Bruce peppers small kisses over her face.
"You're the one who's always talking about the value of hard work," he smirks. "Had to make you work for it."
"I changed my mind," she says. Bruce freezes, looking so panicked that Selina laughs. She shifts in bed so she can smooth his hair out of his eyes before leaning in to whisper, "Next time lead with this instead."
Bruce chuckles into her neck, the rumbling vibrations sending a warm sensation through her body as he hugs her close and falls back in bed. Selina kicks herself for opening her eyes at the exact moment that she does because it puts her in the perfect position to see past Bruce to the bat signal blazing across the dusky sky. She could pretend she doesn't notice it, but it would get her another five minutes maximum of his undivided attention which is not nearly enough to do anything – Selina is afraid nothing will ever feel like enough again – especially not when she'd spend the whole time thinking about whichever cat got stuck in a tree that GCPD needed Vengeance's help in rescuing.
"Dammit," she breathes against his good shoulder before untangling her leg from his.
"What's wrong?"
Selina tilts Bruce's head towards the window. "You have to go."
"I'm sorry," he whispers into her neck, a shiver going down her spine from the intensity in his voice. Selina turns her face so she can kiss the corner of his mouth, her hand at the back of his neck to keep him there for a moment longer when he kisses her back. He sighs that he really does have to go because Gordon investigated some leads on a drops shipment as a favor so it is relatively important, though obviously not as important as this. "It's just important in a…time-sensitive way."
"I could get used to seeing Vengeance squirm like this," Selina laughs.
Bruce groans but makes no attempt to move. He buries his face deeper against his neck with a sigh. Selina can't remember the last time she was this content. Maybe sitting on her mother's vanity and watching Maria dance around the room to music only she could hear, the good outweighing the bad in those brief moments when it felt like the world was as much theirs as it was anyone else's.
"A twenty for your thoughts?" he mumbles against her shoulder.
"It's a penny, you dork," she laughs. "You can't even proposition someone correctly!"
He looks up with the most serious facial expression and says, "I was adjusting for inflation!"
Selina rolls over until she's mostly on top of him and staring into his clear blue eyes, finally free of that tortured look she has come to know so well. She smooths her hand across his cheek and uses the other to push herself up closer. "Did you know that there is nothing that gets me hotter than talking about your accounting practices, Bruce?"
"I could sense a kindred spirit in you, Selina," Bruce replies with a nod before he starts whispering about balance sheets and accrued expenses against her mouth in between kisses as the laughter bubbles out of her effortlessly.