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The thug with all the rings punched Bruce’s side again. The pain that had staled along his ribs from the last beating flared back to life as he cried out. The men who were gathered around the room were lounging about, drinking and playing a casual game of cards. They hadn’t even bothered to properly tie him up. Or, rather, they had taken some rope and secured his wrists to the back of the chair, but they’d just done a piss poor job. Probably because he was a spoiled little rich boy who shouldn’t know how to slip his bonds.
But really, even if he hadn’t learned how to get out of virtually every type of bondage on his ‘World Tour of Self-Discovery,’ anyone with kidnapping experience could tell this was sloppy work. They hadn’t called Wayne Enterprises for a ransom yet, and he’d been there for most of the day already. So, Bruce had to assume these guys had a bone to pick with the Bat and he was just the poor rich schmuck who’d been plucked for him to save.
Bruce wondered what they wanted, because they clearly weren’t part of any of the big crime families; they were just too amateurish for that. Skilled enough that they’d nabbed him in the middle of his charity luncheon, sure, but they’d chosen a warehouse with a big skylight in the middle.
He could almost smile at the thought of how happy that would make Batman. He did love his dramatic entrances, and he loved when the goons chose buildings with the big skylights. Speaking of, Bruce could see the sky getting dark through the window, the usual daytime smog shifting into the haunting darkness of night when the Gotham demons prowled.
And speaking of Gotham’s demons, his was late.
Bruce leaned back in his chair, flexing his hands. Even though he’d loosened the rope around his wrists hours ago, his arms were starting to go numb with the way they were twisted. He tried not to shift too much in his discomfort, both to not draw any more attention to himself from his captors and also to save the strain on his ribs that were definitely bruised if not fractured.
There was no warning before the skylight was shattering inward and Batman swooped down in a spray of glass. The sudden sound that trumpeted Batman’s arrival followed by alarmed screams and the rattle of gunfire left Bruce dazed and cringing back.
Batman was a flurry of motion, attacking the men with an untempered rage that Bruce only saw when his life was threatened. Bones snapped and screams hollowed out his ears. Batman was ripping the still-hot guns out of clumsy hands as bullets sprayed far too close to Bruce.
Bruce fully slipped from his ropes and stood jerkily. Batman slammed the guy whose hands were covered in rings through the flimsy card table with a roar before turning to engage two guys coming up behind him. A man who had been silently chain smoking in the corner all night rushed at Bruce.
He had a knife in his hand and a panicked, wild look in his eyes. Bruce blew out a steadying breath before stepping forward into the man’s momentum. He grabbed the hand with the switchblade in it, jerking it to the side and away from his body, following through with a solid punch straight to his face with the other hand. The man went down, dazed, and Bruce hurriedly backed up when the man began stumbling back to his feet.
Batman came up behind him. Grabbing the back of his neck, he twisted and drove the man’s face down as he snapped his knee up. The crunch of his nose and the spray of blood was sickening. The chainsmoker flopped to the ground unconscious and Batman stolidly stepped over him.
Bruce’s gasping breaths echoed obscenely in the sudden silence that now blanketed the warehouse. He almost wished Batman didn’t walk with such cat soft feet, if only so he didn’t feel so loud. Steady hands carefully cupped Bruce’s shaking ones. The metal in the gauntlets were cool against his burning skin as talon tipped fingers ghosted over the fine bones of Bruce’s fist.
He gently spread the fingers and Bruce hissed in pain. Batman hummed approvingly as he saw that nothing was broken, Bruce had thrown a perfect punch. He wordlessly swept Bruce up into his arms and carried him out of the old building.
Bruce sank gratefully into the strong embrace. He had been kidnapped and held for ransom a good few times in his life, he did live in Gotham after all, and he would say he was used to it. But it never got less tiring. He had been tense and on edge and beaten and forced into hyper awareness since eleven this morning. He was exhausted, and there was nothing more soothing to his fried nerves than being held close to a sturdy, armor plated chest.
Batman noted Bruce curling in closer to him and tightened his arms in response. He gently sat Bruce in the passenger side of the Batmobile then got in on the other. Batman peeled away from the building just as police cars were rounding the far corner. The car was silent as he maneuvered back onto the main roads. His hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel.
Bruce fidgeted, biting his lip, wondering if Batman was actually mad at him. There was nothing he could do against getting kidnapped every once in a while. And he didn’t think he’d done anything spectacularly stupid on live television to warrant any anger, this week anyway. Well, no that’s not true, he had spilled champagne down the front of some model’s dress who was getting too handsy and had also called Lex Luthor a racist asshole before ‘accidentally’ knocking him into the fountain… And it might’ve all been in the same night… But that’s not any worse than what he usually does at his galas!
Batman deliberately unclenched his hands from the steering wheel and took a deep breath. He turned on the autopilot to take them home. He didn’t look up as he asked in a tight voice, “Are you hurt?”
Bruce answered with a smile, cocking his head to try and catch Batman’s eyes, “I’m fine, my ribs are a bit messed up but I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Batman just nodded with a ground out, “Good.”
With the Batmobile silently speeding through the dark Gotham roads, it wasn’t long before they were crossing the bridge to the mainland and into Bristol. As the car screeched to a halt in the cave, Batman jumped out and was on Bruce’s side so fast one would think Bruce was in danger of bleeding out. Thank god Alfred was on his annual holiday to England. He would see this little display and think Bruce was actually dying, just because Batman was hardcore mother henning.
He helped Bruce out of the car and then promptly picked him up again and carried him over to the medical bay. Gently setting Bruce down on the sturdy operating table at the center of the room, he hurriedly got an ice pack and pressed it to his swollen hand.
Bruce quietly held it there while he watched Batman bustle around in the drawers gathering supplies he thought he’d need. Then he was in front of Bruce again, standing between his legs. He deliberately tugged his gloves off one at a time and laid them off to the side before beginning to unbutton the light blue shirt. His eyes had that intense, focused look to them, like there was nothing occupying his big beautiful brain except for Bruce.
It was a look that never failed to take his breath away. Batman’s face was stoic and calm, even as Bruce’s heart pounded with each button popped free. That was another reaction that had never changed. And probably never would, Bruce thought, as he watched the large, scarred hands dexterously work against such delicate thread.
“You’d mentioned your ribs, does anywhere else hurt?” Blue eyes so pale they almost looked gray, flicked up to meet Bruce’s before going back to his task.
Bruce swallowed and took a minute to catalog every ache he’d accumulated over the course of the day. His headache from when they’d first hit him over the head and thrown him into the back of their van had faded, and there was some rope burn along his wrists and forearms but nothing compared to what it would’ve been if he hadn’t shimmied out of the knots early on. His jaw ached from where they’d punched him but the only area that was actually radiating pain was his left side.
“No,” He shook his head. “Nowhere else.”
Batman gave him a look that said he didn’t entirely believe him but just slid the light fabric from his broad shoulders. A mask of fury settled over his features as he took in the extent of the damage. Mottled bruises of black and blue that stood out starkly against his pale skin spread across his entire left side and peppered the right. There were small cuts, some of which were still sluggishly bleeding, from where the skin had broken on the rings of the main thug who’d been beating him.
Batman’s breathing harshened, and his hands flexed on nothing. Bruce lifted a hand and skimmed it along Batman’s jaw to bring his violent thoughts back to the present. He closed his eyes, took a deliberate breath, before opening them and getting to work.
His hands were gentle as he skimmed them over the bruised and inflamed flesh. Carefully pressing and prodding to make sure nothing was broken, the dichotomy of Batman’s immovable face and his loving hands was jarring. Bruce clenched his teeth and trapped any pained sounds in his throat so they died before they could reach his tongue.
Batman grabbed the salve he’d picked out and gingerly spread it across the bruising. Bruce’s lips tightened, unable to hide his sharp intake of breath as the skin of a cut was pulled at. Batman froze his careful ministrations.
“I’m okay, I’m alright, B.” Bruce reassured.
Batman swallowed, his lips twisting into an almost pained grimace as he continued applying the cool ointment. Soon there was nothing left to occupy the twitching hands that were still clearly itching for violence. Batman didn’t move a muscle to leave, to go break into the GCPD’s holding cell that the kidnappers had been thrown into and beat them all to wet bloody pulps, no matter how much he wanted to or they deserved it. He just glared burning holes into the battered abdomen of his love.
“Hey, darling…” Bruce tried in a soft voice. There was no reaction. He tried in a firmer, more insistent voice, “Batman.”
Rage glazed eyes found his again, and Bruce met the intense stare evenly. He could see the swirling emotions that the thin veneer of anger masked. They remained locked like that until the hard line of Batman’s lips wavered, trembled minutely.
Something cracked and bowed in Batman under the weight of Bruce’s eyes. All his burning anger and protective passion rushing up, crashing against, and breaking on the shores of Bruce’s calm gaze. The anger bled out of his frame at Bruce’s soft and understanding smile. Batman slumped down, his head hanging between his shoulders with his hands braced on either side of Bruce.
“Oh, baby,” Bruce crooned with a sigh as he heard Batman’s soft, shaky breathing.
Bruce dragged his hands across the kevlar plated armor of Batman’s chest and shoulders before sweeping up to tug his cowl off. Bruce leaned in, trying to catch his eyes.
Batman’s brow was knotted and he was biting his lip in a last ditch effort to keep himself under control. Tears brimmed in his big blue eyes. Despite all the anger living inside him, despite the brutal years of training and growing up in such a harsh city, despite the thick, jagged scar that was carved across the entirety of the left side of his face, he still had such a wide eyed look of innocence to him. Hope burned in his core, blanketed and wrapped up and entangled inside with his rage, but it was still there and shining strong. Bruce loved when all his walls fell and he got to see that look. That was who Batman was, why he fought and why he loved so deeply. And Bruce couldn’t believe he was fortunate enough to be allowed to see it.
He just looked so beautiful, ethereal, bright and holy, haloed in the harsh infirmary lighting and surrounded by the cool dampness of their Cave. The Batman, the creature of darkness that all of Gotham City feared, was so devastatingly beautiful with his aristocratic features, dark armor, and the scar that tugged at the corner of his lips and stretched out starkly across his cheek before slicing up his temple.
Gotham’s Dark Knight but also a fallen prince.
The dark rings of eye makeup were smeared and runny from rain and sweat and the tears slowly escaping his long lashes. His blonde hair was greasy and falling in front of his eyes. The white light washed his skin porcelain and highlighted the glistening sweat lingering along his sharp cheekbones from long hours under the cowl. His thin, chapped lips were parted as he tried to keep his hitching chest level. His hands were white-knuckling the metal table and he looked with beseeching eyes up at Bruce.
Bruce hummed softly, comfortingly. Cradling Batman’s head in his arms, he guided him closer. Batman sniffled and swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat, sinking forward into Bruce’s embrace. He tucked his face into Bruce’s muscular shoulder. His broad frame trembling as Bruce carded his fingers through his hair, gently scratching as he reached the nape of his neck.
They sat there together for untold minutes as time slipped silently by. Bruce knew the tide was coming in, that eventually the feelings that Batman had shoved down in his chest would come racing in to crash against his shores; the sudden swell of emotion would come lightning fast to wash over Bruce and submerge and drown him under the weight and intensity of the never ending depth of emotion this man harbored. But Bruce had weathered storm after storm of pain and sorrow and rage and love and fear, and knew that he could wait. Wait out the deep well inside Batman, wait for it to overfill and wait for him to acknowledge that his feelings were messy but that they weren’t bad. And that Bruce would be there, every time, to help him wade through them.
After so many years of silent brooding shifting suddenly into loud and furious roaring, Bruce almost physically jolted when Batman mumbled, soft as the shifting wings of the bats above. His lips brushing Bruce’s collarbone as he said in such a small voice, “Can’t lose you…”
Bruce’s jaw dropped at the easy, quiet confession. Something that Batman usually would’ve growled at scornfully as an admission of weakness. Something that would’ve taken an hour at least of finagling and near-antagonistic poking and prodding at him mixed with careful questioning and soft touches and the very limit of Bruce’s patience, Batman now offered up willingly. He said it so unflinchingly, trustingly.
Bruce fought the burning in own eyes as he said just as softly but with an undercurrent of steel, “You have me. I’m right here with you.”
As Batman shuddered in his arms, Bruce said in the rumbling, soothing voice that always coaxed Batman deeper into his little headspace, “You kept me safe today. You did so good, and I’m so proud of you. But today was just so much for such a little boy like you, wasn’t it? Let me take care of you now, baby.”
The sob Batman had been swallowing back finally wrenched free from his chest. Tears dampened Bruce’s skin as Batman nodded and whimpered, “Please—”
Bruce pressed a lingering kiss to his temple. They both had a lifetime of trouble expressing their emotions. But they’d come a long way since they first met halfway around the world. They had learned how to be patient with each other, and how to cater their communication to each other's emotional needs. Batman had a lot of different ways in his life to say “I love you,” without having to figure out a way to muscle out the direct words.
And so did Bruce.
He slid off the table, and picked Batman up by the backs of his thighs. “C’mon, my sweet baby bat. Daddy’s got you now.”