Work Text:
i.
Blue is serene, offering both illusion and temptation alike.
(Illusion: the pristine surface of the ocean, unmarred only until you make yourself known.)
(Temptation: that which hides the world lurking underneath—dark, too dark.)
The siren’s song, if you would.
(Perhaps that is why he finds such solace in it, willingly letting himself be immersed in its embrace.
Anton had drawn him in so easily, after all.)
There is a tension that runs through his spine as the water laps at his bare skin, a tension that holds itself taut as he pushes himself past the brink.
And then, that tension bursts forth, a thrumming energy rushing through his veins, telling him to break free, to escape, to—
(He could have drowned in Anton’s embrace.)
(He does not let himself think about how he would have, too, if he had been given the chance.)
“Time?” he asks John, leaning his weight against the metal framing of the glass tank.
“Eighteen minutes,” John replies. “An abysmal time to escape the strait-jacket…and yet an amazing time for holding your breath.”
Bruce can’t help but grin at that. Seems like he hasn’t lost his skills yet, then.
(And yet, what does that matter when Anton has all of his skills too?
Anton has all of his skills, and yet no distractions.
Because, at the end of the day, it was Bruce that was discarded, was it not?)
Yellow is the faint wisp of a setting sun, noble in (or perhaps despite) its finality.
Daniel was a fool for thinking himself above humans. They aren’t insignificant, not when their hearts are bursting to the full with pain, joy, anger, love.
(His parents did what they did out of love. Love for him, love for each other, love for Gotham.
He can’t spit on their memories by disregarding that. He can’t.)
And humans? They’re certainly worth more than a sunset.
But this sunrise? This sunrise that he watches with Anton now by his side once more—wind rustling through his hair, white seagulls with ink-dipped wings flying overhead, the sun bright in his eyes.
This sunrise? It’s worth something.
“So are we doing this?” he shouts to Anton, hands firm on the steering wheel as he looks ahead.
(Because this is the most sure he’s felt in his life.)
“We’ve been on this road countless times over, Bruce,” the man shouts back. “Let’s see where it ends this time around, no?”
Anton’s lips curl upwards in satisfaction at his innocuous turn of phrase.
Bruce wants to cover them with his own (just to show the smug bastard what for), but he’ll settle for not getting themselves into a car accident in the meanwhile.
ii.
The moon’s light wafts down through the open window of the hotel room. It is without a companion in the sky, and yet it is still complete.
“How’d you manage to score this room for us for the night?” Anton asks idly as he flops onto the sheets of the bed.
“I sold the receptionist some silly story about having deleted the email confirming my reservation for this room,” Bruce explains as places the hotel key card on the nightstand, glad for the reprieve from the muggy heat outside. “It helps that I look like every other dumb American tourist that decides to gallivant in the oh so exotic UAE. And that I also happened to have…borrowed the credit card of the person who actually booked this room.”
“And your explanation for your…tag-along?” Anton drawls, fluffing up a pillow. “Certainly she’d have thought it odd that the two of us would be sharing one room.”
He resists letting out a sigh as he loosens his tie. “I’m sure she just thought we’re close friends or something of that sort.”
“And do your close friends kiss you at night too?” Anton murmurs, taking hold of the end of Bruce’s tie and pulling him in close.
Bruce lets himself be pulled in, taking a step and then another until the weight of his knees are resting upon the bed.
He looks down at Anton, considering the man for a long moment.
“I’d hope not,” he finally settles on, letting the pad of his thumb come to rest upon Anton’s pulse point.
(He does not press his thumb into Anton’s pulse point. He does not let his hands come up to wrap around Anton’s nape. He does not lean forward to bite down into Anton’s skin.
But the way Anton swallows at the possibility of it is enough.
…Something to shelve away for later.)
“You’re the only one I’d want kissing me, after all.”
When glass fractures, it is many things.
It is loud, the sound of it harsh as it rings in your ears. It is noticeable, lines quickly forming as they stray from the initial point of stress. And it is painful, shattering into imperceivable pieces that cut at the skin.
There’s a science to this, of course.
(Just as there is a science to the countless things deemed bold for the sake of violence.)
There is a science to the way cracks radiate outwards like spokes on a wheel.
(Heat radiates from Anton to him from all points of contact. Interlaced hands, pressed shoulders, tentative embraces. Out, out, out.)
There is a science to the concentric fractures that follow in short succession, insular things suffering the tension of something about to collapse upon itself.
(And it will always seem to break, a brittle thing unwilling to change.
A cycle. It begins, and it ends. There is no changing that fact.)
There is a science to the way your eye is drawn to the damage done to glass, to the way you are left to imagine the exit wound that must have been left behind.
(Bruce is tired. He is tired, and bruised, and fragile like glass.
And Anton is pointing a gun at him. He is pointing a gun, but does not fire.
Why? Why?)
So when it comes down to using the glass windows of the high rise buildings that dot Abu Dhabi’s skyline as entry points, the two of them settle for cutting out a perfectly round opening in the pane.
It’s brutally efficient in a way that the two of them both appreciate.
Even then, however, that doesn’t stop their target - some nouveau riche venture capitalist up on his luck - from trying to smash the wine glass in his hand into Bruce’s face.
Bruce deftly moves out of the way from the blunt weapon, but the glass still ends up colliding against the wall behind and shattering.
“You, uh, have something on your face,” Anton remarks once they’ve managed to get whatever information they needed from the man and knock him out.
Bruce moves to touch his hand to where Anton had gestured at on his face, but Anton gets to it first.
“A scratch,” Anton notes in a clinical tone, assessing the blood - Bruce’s blood - now on his thumb. “We’ll have to patch it up once we get back.”
And then—
“That’s unsanitary, Anton,” Bruce blurts out, unable to tear his eyes away from Anton’s lips that are now stained a vivid red.
The man smiles at him, sharp and jagged. “I think I’ll take the risk, Bruce.”
iii.
Red is a breath of exaltation, irreverence taking hold of your body as the light in your eye vanishes into shadow.
Red also happens to have Anton nagging at him incessantly when it’s in the form of their rented jeep up in flames.
“Insurance is a thing for a reason!” Anton exclaims, gesturing emphatically at the jeep. “But, of course, you never listen to me, right?”
“I’ll be listening to you for a while,” Bruce mutters. “Since we’re clearly going to be stuck walking for a day at least now.”
Anton rolls his eyes. “You’re insufferable, Wayne, I hope you know.”
“I know,” he replies in a wry tone. “You never let me forget it, after all.”
(And that? That is a choice.
Just as he chooses to hold onto any time he has with Anton for as long as he can.
Even though there are still the things that go unsaid between them.)
(Perhaps especially because of that.)
(It all comes down to a choice, really.
You, alone under an inky sky.
Or you and temptation, walking side by side.)
(Let this adventure, as finite as it is, be a worthwhile one.
That’s all he can ask for.)