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Bruce doesn’t usually let himself end up in situations like this. He ducks out of photographs, smiles wide and sincere when people try to coax him back. Lies sweet and honest and says he’s fine, he promises, don’t worry, he has things to do, have fun without him.
Bruce learned early how to sell a lie.
He avoids mirrors like a vampire. Peers into them only long enough to ensure he’s something approaching presentable then pointedly avoids his own reflection and the repetition of monstermonstermonster that the sight of himself conjures.
So he doesn’t get why he said yes to Steve. (And there’s a lie, one he’s almost sold to himself. One he can cling to instead of admitting that he feels the way Steve looks sometimes, lost and confused, and it makes Bruce want to fix it however he can despite Steve still being a near stranger to him.)
Shutting his eyes, Bruce tries not to think as Steve reduces him to lines on paper, boils him down to a collection of features Bruce can’t even look at without wanting to scream.
He’s a horrible model, too tense and prone to fidgeting. Steve doesn’t complain, just adjusts him several times, first through words, later with hands that grasp with considerable care. It’s strange. Not many people touch Bruce. He won’t let them.
When it’s over, Steve asks if he wants to see. Bruce doesn’t but he takes the sketchbook, prepares to make the expected oohs and aahs as he avoids actually looking. He mistimes, catches the curve of his nose, the swell of his bottom lip, the lines around his mouth. He looks at the careful mapping of his features and doesn’t understand.
“Why would you draw me like that?”
“Because that’s how you look,” Steve answers, rooted and unwilling to be moved. He looks at Bruce as though he can hear it, the chant. Bruce’s father making sure he never forgets what he’s always been.
Bruce shakes his head because no that’s his mother in that face, the features skewed masculine but still her. But he’s never been her. She wasn’t the parent he took after.
“That’s you, Bruce,” Steve promises like he means it and maybe he does. Lies sound awkward in his mouth, foreign and obvious to anyone not willingly blinded.
Bruce chooses, lie or not, to believe. Staring down at that drawing, he’s never felt so innocent.