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“I need you to hear me out before you get mad.”
Selina promptly sets down her game of Angry Birds and looks up expectantly at Bruce, who’s hovering in the doorway of her room like he’s waiting for permission to enter. (Which is vastly amusing—and painfully endearing—to Selina, considering that, you know, it’s his house in the first place.)
He waits until she waves him in to come in and settle beside her on the plush loveseat he insisted she have. “Okay. Now, there’s no delicate way to say it, but I think we should get married.”
Selina’s heart nearly stops, but years of working at the Iceberg has, thankfully, taught her a poker face. “Buy a girl dinner first, honey,” she says playfully, her steady voice in no way betraying how wildly her thoughts are racing.
Bruce shakes his head. “No, no, I’m serious.”
“I don’t know what kind of advice you’ve gotten, Bruce, but if you’re trying to propose this is a hell of an unromantic way to do it.”
He sighs exasperatedly. “Selina. Be serious.” He chews his lip for a moment and toys with the drawstring of his track-pants. “I think…I know you aren’t, you know. A wedding bells, picket fence, hearts-and-flowers girl. I’m not that kind of man, either. I’m not asking for a royal wedding here, I just…”
Selina waits patiently as Bruce trails off, fiddles with his pants again, taps his fingers against the back of the couch, and swallows about eight times before he finally bursts out, “We’re dangerous people, you and me. We don’t lead quiet lives. And I get that you can’t go out and, you know, do what you do right now, but I still do it almost every night and…and if something happens to me I want to know you have resources.”
It’s probably the most delicate way he can phrase I want you to have my money when I die, but still it nearly makes Selina laugh. He’s so awkward, it’s beautiful.
And then the deeper meaning hits her, and her eyes well up. “Oh, Bruce. Baby, come here,” she murmurs, and he obligingly slides close to her as she draws his head down to rest against her swollen belly. He loves this, will shamelessly talk about how much he loves it, even—to lie there and and feel their baby kicking around inside her. He’ll stay like this for hours, sometimes, just talking and whispering to the baby and stroking the curve of her stomach very carefully with his palm.
Selina wraps her arm around Bruce, stroking his back as he nuzzles her belly. She knows it’s hard for him to admit he has a heart, much less wear it on his sleeve. This is a big deal. Easier, she thinks, for him to pretend it’s about the baby than admit that he’s in love with her.
It’s been a long five months. Pregnancy has hardly been a picnic for her, but she knows it hasn’t been easy on Bruce either, considering that he has to think of how his actions will affect her. He has to worry about her life in addition to his, which means he can’t be as reckless as he used to be. He hasn’t quit being Batman, but he has stooped, more than once, to using his Batman tech to get Selina the food she’s craving or some other comfort measure to make things easier on her.
Selina loves him. She knows it’s too early, knows it’s not rational. She knows that admitting it, even to herself, could open her up to a world of hurt.
And yet. And yet.
He built her a custom massage chair, hired her a personal chef to cater to her every craving, painted the nursery walls himself. He’s converted a room in his master suite to a birthing center, had a birth pool installed, hired a team of nurses and midwives and made them all sign NDAs just to be extra safe. He even re-recorded, word-for-word, her hypnobirthing audio with his own voice, when she admitted she loved the content but didn’t like the woman’s voice on the tape.
She knows he can only afford all of this because he’s Bruce Wayne. But it thrills her to the core that he’s doing all of it for her, and she has the feeling that if he didn’t have the money, he’d find some other way to express how much he cares.
“Bruce?”
He presses his cheek to her belly button. “Yeah?”
She watches, stroking his back fondly, as he closes his eyes and relishes every kick. God, she loves this man. “I don’t care about your money. I’m sure a dozen girls have told you that, but—”
“No, they haven’t.”
“Well, at least they were honest,” she quips with a roll of her eyes. “Anyway, I was going to say—”
“You were the first.”
For a moment there’s dead silence in the room. Selina can’t quite wrap her head around it. “You…I…what?”
“You were the first woman I ever…” He sighs heavily and presses his face into her skin. She feels his face heating up. “I didn’t ever really have…time…or, well, interest…in anything like that. For a long time. I kissed a few girls in high school, in college. Never really went further than that. I didn’t want—I mean. It seemed like. A waste of time, I suppose.”
“A waste of time.” She can’t believe what she’s hearing. “There weren’t others? I mean, no one?”
“No one.”
“But the night we—I mean, the first time—you knew what to do, I mean…”
“It wasn’t hard.” He sighs again. “You were responsive. I paid attention. I like making you happy.”
There’s another long moment of silence. Then Selina begins again, tears thickening her voice. “Bruce, baby…I don’t care about your money.” She holds him tight, the baby inside her kicking happily as if they can sense the undercurrent of bittersweet joy in the moment. “But I care very much about you. I don’t need to be taken care of, honey, but you…”
“I don’t do it because I think you can’t take care of yourself—”
“I know, baby. I know. You do it because you want to.”
“I want you to be happy.” He pauses for a moment there, she feels every one of his muscles tighten, and then he lifts his head just enough to hide his face in her breasts. “I don’t know how to be happy, Sel. But I know…I know I love to see you smile.”
The tears overflow. Selina holds her now-fiance tight and kisses the top of his head, his forehead, even the tips of his ears, over and over until finally he lifts his face and lets her claim his mouth. He’s so careful, lying to the side so that he won’t squish the baby (who’s kicking up a storm in there) and keeping one reassuring hand laying right over the swell of her belly. He kisses her mouth, kisses her cheeks, kisses away her tears.
“I love you,” he whispers against her closed eyelids.
It’s the first time he’s said it, and it brings on a fresh wave of tears. She holds him like she’ll never let go. “If I’ve already stolen your heart,” she says, her voice’s usual smooth cadence vastly impaired by her tears, “guess it doesn’t really matter if I steal your last name too, does it?”
He muffles his laugh in the curve of her neck. “I love you,” he says again, and she can’t get enough of it, the sound of the words or the pattern his lips make against her skin.
They kiss again, her hands running through his hair, his hand protectively cupped around the curve of her belly. It’s magic, this moment; the world has shrunk to the two of them. The three of them. At long last Batman, Bruce Wayne, the would-be Prince of Gotham, the symbol of hope, has found his family.
She’d kiss him forever, except there’s a problem. “Bruce?”
“What is it, Sel?”
“I think my water just broke.”