Chapter Text
Damp, dank, dark, and quiet. You’ve sat in his chair for the past 2 hours, listening to the stillness, aside from the occasional titter of a bat or the rattle of the subway overhead.
The city is waking, the portion that is more palatable to swallow will emerge over the skyline with all the trepidation of the coming sunrise and absolutely no assumptions. There is no darker side of Gotham to contend with when the city lights turn off and that blurry warning soaked into the clouds disappears into the sunlight- and for all intents and purposes Gotham is a bustling metropolis of economic stature.
The other portion of Gotham slinks away into the shrinking darkness, nestles between tall buildings and narrow by-ways, crouches in abandoned buildings and slinks away into underground hideaways, biding its time until the sun drowns below the horizon and the lights flicker back to life in a shallow effort to chase away the danger sitting in every wavering shadow.
Your phone rests limply in your lap, screen dark since receiving one simple text message 10 minutes ago: an emoji of a house. He’s never been much for words, even when the two of you were younger.
It was such a headache to figure him out back then, like he wanted you to read his mind and couldn’t be bothered to give you a crumb of a hint, even to the point of creating fights and distance.
But he’d always show up, sooner or later, on your doorstep, or at the bus stop on your way to your classes, or outside the university doors with some kind of peace offering: a coffee, or tea, chocolate eclairs, raspberry scone…
He knew you. More than you could ever know him and that’s what pissed you off about him.
Still does, sometimes.
Because even though you’re sitting on a gold mine that would make a reporter’s career, and drive the socialites and the common people stark raving mad you feel like there’s a portion of him you’ll never be privy too. Even though you’ve watched the mask come on and off, helped him out of that bulky armor when he’s been too stiff to do it himself, cleaned away that black kohl around his eyes until he’s clear and lucid and Bruce again…
You still feel like you’re supposed to be reading his mind in those moments when he gives you absolutely nothing.
You toss your phone onto his makeshift work desk and stand…all his screens are dark, waiting to be woken, to replay whatever horrors he’s lived in the last 10 hours and hold them for repetitive use.
He won’t sleep, not until he has to. He’ll stand, force himself awake as he pours over memories and gritty criminality he’s spent the night beating back into the shadows.
And you’ll let him. Even help him.
Alfred sits at the counter when you come back up, a singular route mapped for the coffee maker in the corner.
He scans the front page of the Gotham Post, glances at you in his peripherals, “Y/N,”
Your eyes tighten at the corners, steady your hand as you fill the filter, “Alfred…”
It’s quiet again as you pour water into the recess, fit the pot under the spout, and dig through the nearby cabinet for a mug.
He debates on saying something important, something necessary, about you, and Bruce, and all the hours you both lose down there in the dark. Wants to say something about the life you’re both letting sifting through loose fingers…but he swallows, grabs his cup of tea, watches your shoulders tighten because you expect it, don’t you?
And he bites it back, makes his tea taste the wrong side of bitter. “Water’s still hot in the kettle.” Is what he says instead, feels guilty, but also absolved in that same moment when your shoulders drop.
Alfred sighs when all you give him is a curt nod. “He has a meeting today.”
You stop. Pause mid-way in opening the tea pantry, “As in ‘arranged but breakable’, or…?”
“They’re coming here,” he says it quickly, washes it back with another swallow.
“Shit. Alfred-“ You look over your shoulder, he won’t look at you, far too interested in the daily news… “When?” you ask, incredulous.
“Couple of hours,” He sounds simultaneously sorry and justified.
And now you just blink at him. Repeatedly.
He glances at you, still frozen aside from your eyes. Scans a couple more words, looks again. What paragraph was he just on?
The paper flops onto the counter dejectedly. “I know,” He says, folding his hands over the news.
“You know he’s not in any state of mind to…” You trail off here, because what do you say? Not in any state of mind to run a company? To talk to people? To become a public, functioning member of society?
“And at this rate he never will be.” Alfred retorts, his tone brittle.
You exhale deeply, cheeks puffing. The coffee pot splutters to life, hissing and grumbling, and you know to expect the same thing when this news is delivered to the man in question.
“I’ll tell him,” You sigh, rub at your eyes, pinch the bridge of your nose on each pass.
Alfred nods, gaze slipping into some middle distance of the kitchen, “He’ll take it better from you. Less likely to put up a fuss.”
You stare at him as if he’s grown three heads, and honestly, he might as well have. “Yeah, could you say that while making intentional eye contact with me? I’m more inclined to believe bullshit that way.”
His mouth spreads in a smile as chuckle tumbles out of him. But he blinks and looks right at you. “He’ll take it better from you.”
You roll your eyes but can’t help mirroring his smile. “Sure.”
When you have your tea poured and his coffee made- a teaspoon of honey stirred in -you take a deep breath, purse your lips and tell Alfred, ‘wish me luck’ on your way back down.
You hear his music before the elevator screeches its way to a stop, and he’s there, shoulders hunched, darkness clinging to the corners of him and the snatches of humanity that the cold lights overhead skim across.
He gives no indication that he’s aware of you, but you know better.
He expects you. He always expects you. Every morning.
The night he’s lived plays out on the screen, and you glance at it briefly, before dragging your gaze across the rest of his humming machinery, placing his steaming mug off to the side of the keyboard.
His eyes flicker over to it, hands pausing, sea-blues dart up to meet your own, they blink, and his mouth twitches, chin jitters- and then he’s turned back, looking for his journal and pen, skates over your phone laying in the middle of everything.
He pauses again as you ghost behind him and head for his bike, for the backpack looped around the handlebars, and then he’s writing, looking up every now and again at the screen.
His handwriting is near illegible, even to him, but his thoughts are so fleeting and threadlike in these moments that his hand races to meet the rapid-fire memory of his brain and put it all into words and he can’t sacrifice time for decent penmanship.
He takes half a step back and then leans down on his free forearm as he recounts tonight’s events for himself later. He won’t remember everything. He never does.
The nights are too many, too fast and bleary, and the motives and crimes and victims pool into one another until they each lose individual meaning. All that’s left in the end as a true reminder are his sore muscles and dry eyes.
A hand on his shoulder, hesitant, small- you. Something nudging the back of his legs. Chair. His desk chair.
He sits, because it’ll be a distraction otherwise.
His letters slur into one another, just becoming a squiggling, childlike scribbling, barely verging on something that looks like it holds meaning. He pauses at the end of the page, ball point still resting on the paper as he looks up-
The mayor’s son.
Déjà vu.
Something gnawing at him, in the pit of stomach, sharp and angry, claws its way up through his flesh like a starving animal given a feast- your reflection in the dark corner of the screen – and he swallows it down. He can almost feel it roll down his throat, hard and cold, and not enough room, until it hits bottom like a rock, jarring and merciless.
The pen slips from his fingers of its own accord, and he blinks his way down to his journal. A very large period punctuates the end of the page, and he closes it.
You don’t ask. You won’t ask. You never ask. And he hopes you never do.
Because he’d tell you. Without hesitation. And he hates himself for that.
An almost imperceptible flinch when he feels your fingers in his hair. His grimy, oily, unkempt hair- he wants to tell you to stop, he knows it doesn’t feel nice for you.
They comb through, pull it all back away from his face, and he won’t deny how wonderful it feels: your fingertips occasionally massaging at his scalp, nails scraping…his eyes slip closed.
And then your hands slide down, settle around his neck, thumbs run up and down along his spinal column before deliberately searching for stiff muscle there-
He inhales sharply when you massage at knots and tightness that reaches up to the base of his skull-
His lips part with the want to say something, anything. Any number of things about how you’re too good to be here, how grateful he is that you are here, how sorry he is…
But he sighs instead and clamps his mouth shut.
He turns slowly in the chair until you’re just inches from his legs, and tilts his head back to look at you, his eyes in that middle ground between vengeful arbiter and hollow billionaire. That grey area where he gives you nothing, and aches bone-deep because of it.
Only, he’s faltered today- because you reach and cup his face in your hands, thumbs running over his cheekbones delicately-
God, how long has it been since someone’s touched him so gently? He doesn’t know. Can’t remember, even as he closes his eyes and searches through the years he’s closed up in his mind.
You.
In his memories.
Never touched him. But you were always so delicate with him in other ways, so careful. Until he wasn’t. And then you’d break. And he could never stay away long enough for you to piece yourself back together without him. Build a life without him.
No, you’ve never touched him like you are now, but…
He’s felt you in every facet of his life, in every quiet moment. A living reminder. A breathing soft-spot. A warm constant. But a cold dose of reality.
He’s wanted. He feels that from you.
And he wants. Has since the first fight drove you to silence and complete absence in his life. He thought he’d last, crawl through the days without you until you became a melancholic background regret in the minutiae of his ‘life’.
But no. He’d crawl. And crawl. On bloodied hands and knees, he’d crawl.
Until he couldn’t anymore.
And then he’d run back to you, attacker and victim rolled up into one conflicted, silent, detached idiot, dying for your forgiveness that he’s never truly voiced or begged for, like he should.
He knows he should.
Your eyes cut over to his work area, “You should take a shower.”
His eyes flutter open, “What?”
Normally, after a long night, you tell him he should get some sleep. You’ve never told him to take a shower, even though you definitely should have at some point.
“Why?” He asks, tilting his head just to feel your hands caress his skin.
“That meeting with the suits from Wayne Enterprises you’ve been putting off?”
How tentatively you say that, cautious. Like you aren’t sure he remembers.
His head tips, eyes narrow as he waits for you to finish.
“They’re coming here.” You say.
His mouth twists, thins, upper lip starts to curl as his brow furrows tightly-
“Yeah,” you interrupt him prematurely, and his expression jolts, somewhere between surprise and lukewarm irritation, “I know.”
His features stall as he watches you, laments the removal of your hands from his face, “Alfred.”
An accusation. An accurate one. You nod, and he huffs with a shake of his head.
Slowly, he stands, practically on your toes and he’s buzzing at the inches of space that separates you, but he doesn’t let that stop him from arguing, “I don’t have any interest in-”
“I know,” You interject softly, flitting your gaze around at the room. At what does interest him.
He stares at you. Long and intently, dancing a knife’s edge at giving everything away with just a word. He wishes in equal parts that you’d look at him in this moment, and that you keep looking at things that aren’t him.
He turns around to get rid of the problem entirely and reaches for the mug of coffee you made him, only to stop and look at your own, curling steam. He picks it up, takes a short inhale of its spice and pines for the same when he parts his lips around the rim.
“You don’t have to agree to anything, you know?” you say, fixated on the elevator, refusing to look at him. Refusing to lay bare with a look how much that small moment of physical contact meant. “Just have to make it look like you’re attempting.”
Bruce scoffs, running his tongue over his lips, “Attempting what?”
You sigh, rather hotly, “Attempting to be Bruce Wayne.”
His breath cuts. Stops sharply, like you’ve kneed him in the gut. But he presses his lips, avoids eye contact and instead rakes his eyes along your form, from feet all the way to your shoulders.
To your one bare shoulder because the collar of the shirt you’re wearing is too large- the hem reaches mid-thigh-
“Is that my shirt?” He realizes out loud, eyebrow popping up.
You swallow thickly, whet your lips. “Is that my tea?” You retort, with a heaping layer of snark.
His mouth twitches at the corners, and he puts your mug down on the desk like the beginning to a peace offering. And then he angles himself into your personal space and relishes the inches you let him devour. Relishes the way you don’t give up ground, but also don’t push back.
“Y/N…” What does he want to say? Is there a right answer, a beginning to a solution for the way he feels? What he can’t afford to feel, but would sell his soul to act upon..?
“Bruce?” Your eyes trace the frame of his body, imagine the edge of him through his baggy clothes, and land on his hand, still wrapped, fingers died black from the makeup that he dawns every night…
Ah, now he wants you to look at him. Wants, wants, wants. He watches his hand reach up with a sense of abject wonder, like his arm has a mind of its own and isn’t ruled by logic. Because this- his hand underneath your chin, cupping delicately -is not smart. At all.
And your wide, doe-like eyes staring at him in mute shock gives him irrefutable validation in one truth: He shouldn’t. He should never.
But his eyes slip, fall like gravity to your mouth and he’s an animal in a trap of his own making. And you know it, watch him do it. And ensnare yourself right along with him.
The only way out of this is to chew his own leg off.
Oh, but you hesitate. Even as you lean toward him, he can see it flicker across your eyes: doubt.
And then against him, chest to chest, neck craned and his hand has moved to cradle your jaw, covet the softness of your skin and the silk of your hair as his fingers run through it, he holds the weight of your head delicately.
He can practically taste the anxiety on the end of all your exhales- your fingers curl into his shirt at his waist, tight and hard. And your mouth looks so soft, his tongue darts out to whet his lips unconsciously and he watches your pupils dilate.
The waiting is tortuous, he knows. He’s been doing this to himself for almost ten years.
That first small brush of his mouth against yours has you stuttering on an inhale and he fights a smile. Feels you lean into him, and presses into you with his arm wound around your lower back and kisses you softly, worried about the prospect of ‘too much’ until you tilt your head and shift the angle into something with more substance.
He hums, nice and small, pleased. He holds you steady, kisses you hard and firm and you wonder if your lips will bruise. And you realize you don’t care.
What a pay-off, after all these years. All those long nights and cold days, supplying yourself company with a ghost: him. Hanging onto the edges of your periphery and offering noncommittal hums to all your olive branches of connection.
And he gives you this after all of that nothing. As if it fits, like it makes sense. Like there’s a pretense of validity.
He groans into your mouth, like he can taste your thoughts, like he knows. Like he’s sorry.
Maybe he is, you’d never know. He’s never said as much, and you doubt he ever will.
The elevator screeches harshly, announcing the incoming arrival of-
“Alfred-“ you say, breaking away, palms flat against his stomach to do something you’ve never done with him before: create distance.
He lets you, after a moment of shock, after registering the spread of your hands, the pressure of your palms, your turned head.
You have the right idea, he knows that. Can feel it in his bones like fire, rushing and burning through what shred of selfishness he allowed to run rampant. Can feel it all dwindle down to the same nothing he’s given you for years as he watches you wait for Alfred to unintentionally end this moment.
He still has you in the scope of his arms, held too close, too warmly, just too much to lie about it being nothing. He could forget this, drive a wedge into this moment and push distance into every moment afterwards, could go back to the neutral ground he’s camped in for years, denying himself.
But he could never lie and say it was nothing.
He doesn’t want to leave you here, trapped in this memory with no reprieve, grasping at ghosts of feelings for comfort. He knows that ritual all too well.
“Hey,” he murmurs, just louder than that God awful elevator, and he watches your throat bob, eyebrows jolt.
But you look at him again, and he decides you deserve more, more than what he’s given you. More than what he has been, more than what he is. You deserve more. In every positive connotation of the word. And he doesn’t know if that includes him. It probably doesn’t.
But he can delude himself into thinking so when he has his mouth on yours again, hand in your hair, arm around you. Holding you delicately.
The elevator stops.
“Master Wayne-“ Alfred starts, hand on the door, ready to push it aside when he takes a good look into the gloom and freezes.
Opens his mouth. Closes it. Blinks once, twice.
And hits the ‘up’ button on the panel, head craned back, corners of his mouth twitching into a small smile, “It can wait.”