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Riddlebat AU-gust, Bruce Wayne Week 2022
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2022-08-29
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First Place in my Heart

Summary:

After over a year and a half of online dating, Bruce finally meets the man he has been talking to on his computer this whole time.

Notes:

My last contribution to the Bruce Wayne Week, with the prompt "Eyeliner". Here comes a huge thank you to the authors who organized this event, it was delightful 💕
This OS also fits the prompt "Online Dating" from the Riddlebat AU-gust collection, for which I thank from the bottom of my heart everyone who participates 💜

Edward and Bruce are specifically their portrayal from the 2022 verse in this OS.
Have a good read, beautiful ~

Work Text:

To say Bruce Wayne was nervous would be an understatement.

As harsh as it is for him to confess a weakness, he felt terrified. He dreaded the feeling in the inside of his knees that turned his legs into cotton, the knots that tied in his stomach, the thin layer of sweat he quickly wiped off his forehead. His throat was dry, his tongue felt too thick in his mouth and his eyelids fluttered rapidly, what made him look... even weirder than usual.

The heavy eyeliner he wears around his eyes, that frames his metallic blue gaze by two smokey dark circles, is often enough to receive puzzled gazes from bystanders, to what adds-up today the fact he stays motionless at the meeting point located in front of a cozy dinner.

"Do not worry," his best and only friend had reassured him earlier. "It's not like you will be talking to this guy for the first time! You spent countless hours chatting with him about bizarre science documents, detective cases and I know he even actively commented on you infodumping about dinosaurs. You shouldn't be stressed today!"

"But what if I am... not like what he... imagined...?"

Selina conjured up supportive arguments in a soothing voice, then proposed to help him find the setting of his encounter with his online pen pal plus the outfit he will wear at said first date.

With her girlfriend Annika, who has a particular soft spot for mushy fairytale stories and nurtures an idealized vision of romance, Selina helped her emotionally constipated goth buddy think of something not too odd.

That is to say, among others she deterred Bruce to invite his date to an exposition of dead stuffed animals or to the aquarium in order to introduce him to his favorite marine creatures and talk for hours of his beloved pinnate batfishes.

Apparently, as Bruce learned when both Lina and Annika firmly rejected the proposition, spending a while sharing anecdotes regarding a specie of fish tends to get 'boring' and is 'not very attractive'. He couldn't get why.

Nevertheless... he played the romantic card as instructed.

Hence, he was stressed.

His anxiety reinforced when he spotted the young man: golden-brown hair falling past the level of his shoulders, clear-framed glasses, an adorable, round baby face and entirely dressed in variants of green that match his castleton eyes.

They sent a few selfies to each other so they know what the other looks like and they shared a phone call twice so they heard their voice; even though they don't practice much the pictures or vocal exchanges, preferring to chat via written messages.

"... Bruce Wayne?"

Only when the man stopped in front of him and looked up to him, a shy smile on his pink lips, did Bruce realize he could have done something, like waving at him to help Ed spot him on the sidewalk or smile when he arrived at the dinner.

"Edward Nashton," he mirrored, shifting from one foot to another.

Damn, that was a pathetic start.

"... You use eyeliner?"

All things considered, if this was the first question Edward managed to phrase, he definitely must be as much of a weirdo as Bruce is.

"I... do. I like makeup. And I like this style."

"... I believe it looks good on you."

Nashton handed him over a modest bouquet of blue hyacinths.

"You said you love blue hyacinths once," he justified, blushing slightly. "So... these are for you."

"... That's very nice. Thank you. I have a plant for you too, it's a small potted monstera deliciosa. I left it on the roof."

Edward frowned, at a loss.

"Annika told me to buy you roses," Bruce explained. "But a cute exotic plant with larges leaves seemed much more appropriate."

"... Sure. Who doesn't want a plant that has the term 'monster' in its name?"

"It's because of the appearance of the leaves. In South America, the leaves of giant monsteras tend to split horizontally at multiple spots, what looks like the thin slots of a mask or the eyes of a giant predator ready to jump on a prey. If I were to make a Venetian mask with a monstera, I would wear eyeliner under it to look scarier."

"Fascinating," Edward smiled, a sincere, genuine smile: he enjoys to comment Bruce's infodumps when they chat on discord, it's just as adorable to hear him do so in real life.

"Do you want to climb with me to the roof?"

Internally, Eddie prepared for an odd day: he let his crush choose the setting. This being said, since they met in front of a café, he inferred this would be a typical, standard first date, discussing music and their habits while eating pumpkin pie and drinking hot cocoat at a table.

Apparently, Bruce opted for something different.

Edward smiled as he followed him to the inside stairs of another building in the same street.

"Smearing black around my eyes helps me think I blend easily in the dark," Bruce informed him while climbing the stairs, before thinking it through: that is exactly the kind of quizzical sentences Selina advised him to avoid. "I feel more confident that way."

"Do you also feel closer to racoons? Because you surely look like one."

Edward chuckled when Bruce shrugged, unbothered to be associated to a racoon.

Bruce Wayne set up the peak in matter of romance according to him: a table for two on top of a small-sized building, with a funny-looking plant in its pot on the table... and a chess plate.

"The winner gets to choose where we eat. Selina reminded me people often eat during dates."

Ed held back another giggle. He heard a lot about Selina and her girlfriend Annika, Bruce's sole human contacts outside the butler who raised him. In return, he told Bruce about his own life situation: he is the single dad of a five years old, his two besties Diedre Vance and Nina Damfino help him a lot to take care and provide for his daughter.

He left Stephanie at her aunts' this afternoon, the girls gladly look over his child while he attends his date.

"You want us to play chess for a first face-to-face date?"

"It's date chess," Bruce corrected, laconic. "For every turn you win, you get to ask me a question. For every neutral turn over which you don't eat a pawn or a piece, you have to say something about you I wouldn't know yet. I looked in various websites that give tips for first dates; they all say communication is key, but surprisingly enough, they never use chess as a mean to express feelings."

"... I can't get why."

"Me neither."

Edward was smiling so much his cheeks hurt, now. Bruce's incapacity to detect sarcasm and his strange conception of human behaviors were part of his charms... and part of the reason why he fell in love with his pen pal during their long messaging sessions.

They settled at the table.

They are both chess experts, as they told each other already and played online together.

Today felt different, though. More... real.

"I want to adopt a bearded dragon one of those days," Edward let out the first random thing he thought of as he advanced the first white pawn, thrilled by the peculiar way to discover more, in-live, about his love.

"I first tried eyeliner when I was fourteen, for a Zorro costume on Halloween. I believed the black mask would look better if the circles of skin around my eyes were dark too. I put too much of it, to the point Alfred said it looked like I had a bat on the face with each wing being an eye."

And so on and so forth.

Edward surprisingly heard a lot about makeup, what was an area they rarely evoked beforehand. He didn't even know Bruce likes eyeliner before this afternoon.

Bruce's apprehension had passed as soon as he spoke about the monstera he gifts to Eddie, and he was free to fully focus on the chess game without anxiety holding him back. He'll see for the rest later.

There was no rush.

One thing at a time.