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It’s snowing in Gotham.
Well, the few teeny tiny specks floating down from the sky like white feathers barely even constitutes as actual snow, but still, it’s enough to put a chill in the air.
When Selina was down on the pavement a bit ago, looking up at the sky, she had thought it made her wreck of a city look almost pretty. For a moment she had remembered a snow globe that a little boy with sad but hopeful eyes had given her years ago and wondered if this - a world of soft snow that glittered against the glow from the streetlights - was what it had looked like inside before it shattered into a broken pile of glitter and glass.
But now she’s on a rooftop three stories up into the cold night air and any sentimental childhood memory she had then is now gone from her mind. Her current opinion of the weather is that it’s stupid and cold and, above all, terribly inconvenient since she’s currently on a stakeout with Bruce, watching the building down below and across the way.
She suppresses a shiver and huffs, watching as her breath comes out in a little puff of pale fog, and shoots a glare at Bruce, who’s too busy looking through binoculars to notice.
She doesn’t even know why she agreed to this stakeout.
Well, actually, she knows why. These drug dealers they’re waiting for have started causing trouble, and they’re inching just a little too close to her turf.
And also because Bruce asked her to. And try as she might to tell herself that Bruce Wayne is reckless and idealistic and his ideas are nothing but trouble, she somehow still finds herself helping him against her better judgement.
“Are you cold?” she hears Bruce ask, and she turns to see him watching her now instead of the building.
“No,” she says, lying through her teeth.
If she tells him she’s cold then he’s going to ask why she didn’t bring a warmer coat in that irritatingly calm voice of his. And he’ll do that thing where he blinks when he doesn’t understand something. Like a befuddled owl.
She also doesn’t want to tell him that she doesn’t own anything warmer for the snow, because then he’ll look at her with pity, like he always does when he remembers how she lives, which is somehow even worse than his owl face.
Selina doesn’t need anyone’s pity. Not even his.
“Are you sure?” he asks, and she can see his stare start to get more intense like it always does whenever he’s trying to solve a puzzle and his mind starts to spin.
“I’m fine,” she says, rolling her eyes as she turns away from him and back to the building she’s supposed to be watching. “Where are these guys, anyway?”
“Their meeting was at nine. They were supposed to be here an hour ago.”
Selina snorts. “Yeah, because meth heads are known for being punctual.”
She hears a soft exhale, Bruce’s version of a laugh, and she feels her lips twitch. Good, she thinks. He hasn’t laughed enough lately. Not like he used to when they were kids and she could get a laugh out of him by throwing bagels at his head.
She refocuses her attention on the building and shifts subtly from foot to foot, trying to keep the cold from seeping into her. She knows the small sprinkling of snow that’s dusting the city’s rooftops and pavements is practically melting the moment it lands and, technically, it’s not that cold, but still, she feels the dampness in her bones and thinks that maybe she should just burn down the entire building and be done with it. It’d end the stakeout, ruin the drug dealers, and teach them a lesson for being late and leaving her out in this awful, awful weather that’s just so -
Warm. All at once she feels warmth instead of coldness, the bitter sting of the night air suddenly stopping, and she’s almost confused for a moment before she realizes that Bruce has taken off his coat and is in the process of draping it over her.
“I know,” Bruce says quietly, “you’re going to tell me you’re not cold. Take it anyways.”
“Bruce,” she says, reaching back to stop him before he can fully set the coat down on her shoulders and lightly pushing the warmth of it away from her, “I’m not a damsel in distress.”
She’s not. She’s got at least two knives on her as well as a whip, and she can take down a man twice her height and three times her weight and make it look easy. She knows that Bruce knows this, but despite him being aware of just how dangerous she is, he always seems to treat her like she’s something precious and she doesn’t quite know why.
“No, you’re not a damsel in distress,” he agrees, and, as if he’s sensing her upcoming argument, adds, in that matter-of-fact tone of his, “but you’re also not very nice when you’re cold.”
“…Shut up.”
He stares silently and pointedly at her, as if she’s just proven him right. Selina presses her lips together, trying not to smile, and when he moves to drape his coat over her again, she doesn’t stop him this time. The coat is warm and soft and smells like him and if his hands linger on her shoulders a little longer than simply draping the coat calls for, well, she doesn’t mind.
“Thank you,” she says, and though she thinks she should probably be protesting more, she finds herself slipping her arms through the sleeves instead, grateful for the warmth.
His hands slide off her shoulders.
“It looks better on you anyway,” he says.
That’s a lie, Selina thinks. A complete, one-hundred-percent, eye-roll-worthy lie. The coat is far too long for someone as short as she is and the hem is dragging on the damp ground like a cape and the tips of her fingers don’t even reach the end of the sleeves and the shoulders are on the brink of slipping off of her.
So it’s a lie, it’s got to be, but Bruce is looking at her like he completely believes what he’s saying and like he wants her to believe it too.
And if there’s a barely-even-there, faint pink tint that subtly colors Selina’s cheeks, well, then she’s going to blame the cold night air. She’s definitely not trying to fight off a blush. Not at all.