Work Text:
The fundraiser dinner hadn’t stretched exceptionally late into the evening, but Selina Kyle felt like it was too long all the same. Bruce barely touched his food, didn’t answer her half the time, and when they left before the first half of the other guests she knew something was definitely wrong. They drove home in tense silence, his mouth in a hard flat line while she tried to figure out what could possibly have stressed him so much in the few hours between breakfast and the dinner. He’d been fine when he’d left in the morning.
At home, at the Manor, he still didn’t talk. She gave him some space while he stalked ahead toward the bedroom. She slipped off her heels, crooking one finger to hold the straps, and climbed the stairs slowly in the quiet house. Nobody else, as far as she knew, was home. Alfred had gone to help Tim settle some things in San Francisco, Damian had wriggled out of the fundraiser dinner by making overnight plans with Jon Kent, and Cass had mysteriously disappeared twenty minutes before they were supposed to leave only to resurface via text message– she’d ditched them for movies with Stephanie.
Selina was just through the bedroom door when she heard retching from the bathroom, and it stirred a self-reproachful panic. She dropped her shoes just inside the door, against the wall, and let quick steps carry her to the bathroom.
Bruce was hunched over the toilet, hands shaking, his face bleached-pale. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. Some of them slipped down from his temples when he sat back with a hoarse exhalation, to slump against the wall and close his eyes.
Without a beat of hesitation, Selina knelt next to him and brushed the hair off his forehead.
“You’re burning up,” she said, frowning. “Have you been sick all day?”
There was a nod against her hand and she cursed herself for not noticing sooner; even if he had been trying to hide it, she wasn’t supposed to fall for his acts.
“Needed to make an appearance,” he mumbled. “Donations go up 17.5% at fundraisers I attend.”
“Do you feel up to getting in bed?” Selina asked, a hand still on his face. His skin was so hot and already dry again. She wondered how long it would take her to find a thermometer.
Bruce nodded and pulled himself to his feet, where he swayed for a moment while Selina grabbed his elbow to keep him steady.
He collapsed on the bed on top of the covers, still in his suit. Selina got him undressed one piece at a time, with some minor cooperation from him. He waved away the offered pajamas and there wasn’t much she could do to force them, and they didn’t seem wholly necessary anyway. The thermometer ended up being in the bathroom cabinet and he was under the blankets, shivering, by the time she got back with it.
“Exactly how much were you hiding and how much hit just now?” Selina asked, sitting on the edge of the bed to run the thermometer across his temple. It was mostly buried in pillows and blankets she had to pull out of the way.
“Hnn,” he said, unhelpfully.
“One oh three,” she announced, frowning. “That seems…high. Should I call Alfred?”
“No,” came the hoarse reply. “Don’t bother him.”
“Alright,” Selina agreed slowly. “We can handle the flu. It is just the flu? You’re not hiding any infected wounds, slow release toxins, recent contact with poisons?”
That got him to roll over just enough to look at her, his bright eyes stark against the surrounding dark blankets. She was ready to accuse him of feeling well enough to be snarky, because surely his reply was going to be something sarcastic about her minor interrogation. But he didn’t talk for several long seconds and she realized he was thinking.
“Toxin,” he said finally, turning back over. “Jus’ a little one. Took the antidote right after, at work. Gotta burn it out of my system.”
Selina exhaled slowly and resisted the urge to throttle him.
“Next time,” she said between her teeth, “that’s information you share as soon as possible.”
“Hn,” he said. “Didn’t want…to worry you. S’fine. Sorry.”
“Live and learn,” she ordered, still unsettled. She reassured herself that he’d been dealing with threats as long as they’d known each other.
Selina let him fall asleep.
She wasn’t tired— she’d slept most of the day, and they’d left the dinner earlier than she’d been expecting. After a brief check that he was indeed out, she brushed the hair off his forehead and went downstairs.
The manor was huge and quieter than usual. She poured herself a glass of wine and found a book in the library and wandered back upstairs. The house was big enough that she didn’t want to be too far if something got worse, because she was always braced for things getting worse.
She got back to the master bedroom to find an empty bed.
“Bruce?”
A faint groan came from the bathroom.
He was sprawled across the tile on his stomach, something that had to feel frigid, his eyes closed. The ashy pallor and shallow breathing stirred a trickle of fear, even as she was telling herself it was probably fine.
“Bruce?”
“I was sick again,” he mumbled to the wall.
Selina sat next to him and put a hand on his cheek. It was hot to the touch, but he leaned into her hand and sighed. It was a soft sound, but one she knew him well enough to hear.
“I don’t think I can just leave you on the floor,” Selina said.
“Five minutes,” Bruce murmured. “S’all.”
“I’m sorry, Bat,” she said, using the bathtub as a back rest. She ran her fingers through his hair, stroking it back away from his face and around his ears. “Tell me if this bothers you.”
“Hn,” he said, which was as much as she could probably hope for at the moment.
Suddenly, he lifted his torso and moved. She’d frozen, assuming his stomach was rebelling again, but all he did was slide enough to rest his head on her lap. She resumed carding his hair.
“Better,” he mumbled.
When his breathing evened out to deep, long breaths, Selina glanced longingly at the wine she’d left on the dresser across the room. She decided to count it a loss for now, at least until something else forced her up.
“What am I going to do with you, Bat? Can’t even take you out for dinner.” Selina teased, and he said nothing. The bathroom overhead was on, and it lit the whole of his broad back in unforgiving light. Perhaps it was the gray-white tinge to his skin, but the scars seemed more noticeable than they normally were to her.
Well, scars like that were always noticeable, but right now some of them seemed practically neon. The pink and white and in some newer places, darker red or yellow, stood out against the unscarred parts. There wasn’t much left unscarred.
Selina followed the lines and craters of them with her eyes, not taking her hand from his hair. She told herself that she was hunting for possible spots flushed with infection, but that was really only part of it. She wanted to see how the city had punished him, how he’d punished himself. These were parts she saw when he lingered in bed or while she perched on the bathroom counter to chat while he showered (he claimed that annoyed him and he was lying, especially when she joined him in the shower— the complaints dried up quickly, then).
They weren’t a surprise, the scars. But he often caught her eye when she stared and his brows would do this thing that wasn’t quite like anger or hurt— it was something in-between, almost like shame or wariness. He’d pull a shirt on pretty quickly after that, without ever saying anything.
Sometimes, he’d jab mercilessly to get the reaction he thought he deserved. Other times, he’d let topics drop so hard and fast and far that it was easy to mistake it for total oversight, the opposite of caring.
Selina had learned that, just like knocking a glass over for a bit of misdirection, it meant he was too afraid of having his worst thoughts confirmed. Better to leave it alone altogether and not know.
Some of them, she thought, did look…worse. Not infection bad, but tight. When she did risk running her fingertips over them, the skin there was also hot with fever and he winced in his sleep.
She left them alone for now.
Just as her ass was growing completely numb, he began shivering again. He grumbled something she didn’t quite catch.
“Bat?”
Nothing coherent was given in answer, and when his movement became more pronounced, she realized he was having a nightmare. That could get dangerous, even for her.
“Bruce,” she said, tensed. She shook his shoulder. Everything said not to wake someone suddenly, but if she headed it off maybe that would be better. “Bruce.”
Then, just like that, he was turned and looking up at her. He blinked blearily, wisps of confusion in his expression. “Cat?”
“Wanna try the bed again? You might be more comfortable.”
He closed his eyes and dragged an arm up to curl around her waist. “Mm. Okay.”
“Bruce,” Selina said. “This isn’t bed.”
With more grumbling, he staggered to his feet and toward the bed. He made it halfway before he dropped back down and stretched out on the carpet.
“Bruce,” Selina said. “This isn’t…”
“Close enough,” he said, following it with a cough. She rolled her eyes and dragged a few of the blankets off the bed, and some pillows for good measure. He didn’t say a word while she was arranging them, but cracked one eye open when she was done.
“I’m not a nursemaid,” she said. “You want the floor, you get the floor.”
“Best nursemaid,” he argued, and he really did sound worse than earlier. His voice was scratchy like someone had poured sand into him.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, not really daring to hope for an effective self-evaluation from him. He seemed pretty out of it already.
To her surprise, he made a sort of whining noise and gestured limply in a general way to his back. His hand flopped against the blanket mound and she tugged the cover down to see.
“Your back?” she asked. There was a vague grunt of assent. “Spine?” Dissenting grunt. He sounded barely conscious. “Here?”
She poked. ‘Here’ was one of the areas of scar tissue she’d been staring at earlier, a broad patch of rose pink skin with a repeating diamond pattern stamped into it. It didn’t look especially irritated, but it was a place to start guessing.
He hissed and she took that as a lucky first guess.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, leaning over to kiss his temple.
This time, when she returned, he was still on the floor but he’d pulled the blankets all the way over his head. She prodded at the lump and it groaned in response. The joke she’d been about to make died in her throat, and she knelt down and moved the blanket back.
“Hey, there,” she said. He was sweating again and he stared at her sort of blankly. It was the blankness that frightened her more than she wanted to admit. “Bruce, sweetheart. You need to drink something.”
“Cat?” he asked in a low rasp. She put her hand on his forehead again and bit her lip.
“Round one of meds,” she said, fishing ibuprofen out of the bottle. “And liquids. If you can’t keep them down, then I call Alfred. I’m a grown-up, but you’re a physical ecosystem unto yourself and I’m still learning all the rules. Come on, Bat. Up.”
He complied and sat up just enough to toss back the pills and drain half a glass of water.
“Slow down,” she said, taking the glass. “You’re going to puke it back up at that rate.”
Bruce was either beyond words or beyond wanting to try. He dropped back to the pile of blankets with a huff.
“I’m going to touch your back,” Selina warned, thinking it was probably better to make sure he was prepared. Most of the time, these days, she could get away with touching him suddenly— some of that was likely his own constant awareness. If that sense were compromised, she didn’t want to end up with a black eye. He’d take longer to forgive himself than she would.
There was something that made her heart ache, about knowing how dangerous he was and knowing how little he’d intentionally use that against her. She’d known men far less capable who posed a bigger physical threat, just because they wanted to hurt. She had come to not expect that from him, and it felt strange to call it trust. That’s probably what it was, but it felt just a little too foreign as a concept to be sure she recognized it.
She’d brought a small tub of scar cream up with the ibuprofen and water, and she opened it now. The first dab of it onto his back was more experimental than anything else, but he didn’t react adversely, so she began rubbing it gently into the rough, puckered skin.
It didn’t bother her as much as he seemed to think it should, when he was well enough to react. The scars weren’t pretty, but there were also different kinds of ugly. Some days, the suffering the scars represented did turn her stomach a bit. But most of the time, Selina found them…reassuring. It didn’t make them any more beautiful, but it was the sort of ugly that said survival. That was the gold standard of her world for a long time, so it was a consolation to spend her days with someone she could trust not to throw in the towel at the first sign of adversity.
Maybe she knew what trust was a little better than she’d thought.
Beneath her gentle fingers, moving in slow circles on the scars, he let out a long, soft sigh. It somehow squeezed her heart more than a satisfied moan might have. She kept going, working in small spots, losing track of time.
Then, he turned his head and she paused.
“Bat?” It was a question with are you okay and are you going to be sick again, because even if he seemed to be relaxing he still felt overwarm with fever.
He shook his head into the pillow and that was unusual enough that she leant forward to look closer. The part of his face that wasn’t buried was wet.
“Bruce? Are you hurt?” she asked, with just a hint of panic. “Bruce, sweetheart.”
“Nothing,” he growled into the pillow. It lacked heat or bite. “I don’t know.”
Impulsively, Selina put an arm around his shoulders and hugged him, their faces close together.
“You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” he complained, but he didn’t pull away.
“Oh, trust me, if I wanted to be gone I would be,” Selina said, staying where she was. “It sounds like the medicine is kicking in.”
“Hnn,” he said, with a sniffle.
She sat up. “Don’t move. I’m not done.”
He ignored her and moved anyway, but just enough to tuck his arm under his head as an additional pillow.
“After this, Popsicles and a movie if you can’t sleep,” Selina said. “When your tongue gets blue, I’m taking a picture.”
“Mhmm,” Bruce said, still sounding hoarse and shaky but less so than earlier.
“Bruce,” she said, quietly, after another minute. “If this feels good, I can do it…whenever.”
She thought he was going to pretend not to hear her— the moment where he turned, where he pulled a shirt over his head— but he sniffled again and said, “Alright.”
“What are we watching?” she asked, screwing the lid back on the cream. She stretched out next to him and he watched her face for several breaths; she watched his back. It wasn’t quite as ashy as earlier, but still drawn and pale.
“Can we…” he closed his eyes and then opened them again. “Can we just lie here for a bit. My stomach doesn’t like me right now.”
“Whatever you need,” Selina said. She kissed his forehead and he made a face.
“I’m disgusting,” he said. “Selina. Please.”
“You’re disgusting,” she agreed. “Try to sleep. I’m going to tell you about the time I took Isis to the vet in a snowstorm. I know you love this one.”
“I do,” he said, his gaze intent and feverish. His eyes were rimmed red and she started brushing his hair back again.
“Then you won’t mind hearing it again,” Selina said. “So. It was a blizzard outside, and Isis…”
Bruce fell asleep.