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Bruce has been shot, stabbed, and fried before. He’s had every bone in his body broken twice. He has been maimed and tortured more times than he can count. His body is a patchwork of scars rivaling Zsasz himself. Bruce has known grief, torment, guilt, and anguish. He’s survived scenarios that a normal person could not imagine, let alone experience and come out on the other side with (most of) his sanity intact.
Somehow, despite all that suffering, Poison Ivy’s handiwork tonight takes the cake.
The batsuit, of course, consists of layers upon layers of protective leather and kevlar. It wouldn’t provide much protection, otherwise. Once Damian put the cape on and tipped right over from the weight. Despite all that, Bruce is shivering like he’s naked in a meat freezer. He has to use autopilot to drive the Batmobile home because his hands are shaking too severely to hold the steering wheel properly.
“Yes, it was a full dose,” Damian reports in the passenger seat beside him, one hand at his earpiece while he fills Damian in on the night’s events. His other hand, gloveless, rests open and upturned on the center console—an invitation for Bruce to grab if he needs it. He doesn’t. “I tried. Obviously, he’s too stubborn to listen to anyone with sense.”
“I c-can hear you,” Bruce manages past his chattering teeth, grimacing.
“Oh, hush, Father.” To Alfred, he says, “Yes, I offered to drive home, but he wouldn’t let me.”
“Y-You’re in m-middle school.”
The Bats are all accustomed to Ivy’s various forms of floral warfare by now. All of them have been hit with cuddle pollen in particular at least once apiece. It’s one of Ivy’s tamer concoctions, utilized to disarm rather than maim. That doesn’t make it tolerable by any means—especially when the only cure they have is time. And…contact.
Bruce remembers when Dick was little and snuggled with Bruce and Alfred in the nights following a Poison Ivy encounter. She always went easier when he brought a kid along. The pollen turned the already affectionate Dick into a python. He’d wrap his arms around his prey and hold on tight for hours while he shivered out the symptoms.
Bruce is different, though. He’s a grown man. He is a fearsome vigilante. He doesn’t need to be cuddled like a child after a nightmare just because he foolishly walked into an Ivy trap. He can withstand a few hours’ discomfort until the symptoms abate. Can’t be more than a day, right?
Bruce tells himself this even while his muscles cramp and it feels like he’s hypothermic despite the car’s heating system and seat warmers operating on full blast. His teeth chatter noisily and an instinctive, primal part of him aches for someone to hold him, but Batman has stood his ground against more painful torture methods in the past. He can power through this chill in his core. He doesn’t need to hold his son’s hand to get through a car ride home.
When they arrive back at the cave, Bruce heads straight to take a decontamination shower. He turns the water on so hot his skin stings and reddens, and yet, while his epidermis boils, his insides are still freezing. His muscles, usually loose and tired after a patrol, are stiff as marble. His organs feel like someone opened him up and filled all his spaces with ice cubes.
He stays in the hot shower for as long as he can get away with, shivering, until eventually he must consider the potential for blisters and he forces himself to shut off the spray. It’s worse than being dropped in the Gotham river in winter. He dresses in multiple layers of sweats and thick socks. It doesn’t make a difference.
Bruce braces himself and goes back to the main area of the (cold, cold) cave to finish his work for the night. Stephanie is back from her own patrol and has already showered and changed out. She gives Bruce a strange look, her eyes sweeping his bundling attire. “Catch a cold?”
“Ivy,” Damian explains from where he’s already tucked into his post-patrol snacks.
“Ohhh.” Stephanie follows Bruce to the computer. “Got a case of the cuddlies, old man?”
“N-No.” Bruce gets started on the night’s mission report and does his best to ignore her presence entirely.
“Have we called Selina yet?” she asks Damian, dismissing Bruce’s sullen denial entirely. “She’d love to take care of this.”
“Unavailable. Deep cover mission upstate.”
“Poor guy. Welp, it looks like this is, yet again, a mission only the amazing and inspiring Stephanie Brown can handle. C’mon, Brucie, bring it in.” Stephanie comes around the back of Bruce’s chair and wraps her arms around him from behind. Bruce doesn’t have the strength to shove her off, shivering and weak as he is. She pushes up his thick sweatshirt sleeves and rubs his arms, trying to warm him up. “How’s that, big guy? Can you feel the love?”
“Get off of me.” No, he is definitely not filled with immediate relief as the skin contact leeches the cold right out of him in waves.
“So grumpy. You know, it’s that kind of attitude that makes people think you don’t want warm hugs.”
“I don’t.”
“Denial is a river in Egypt, boss.” Steph takes a new plan of attack. She comes around the chair and shoves Bruce with an elbow in his side. “Move over. I’m coming in.”
“Get your own chair.”
“And let you freeze to death, lonely and sad? I think not. Move.” She manages to squeeze herself into the chair designed for one, her body smushed between Bruce and the arm rest. She leans into his side, humming contentedly. “You know, they do say love is the best medicine.”
“That’s laughter.”
“Good thing I’m hilarious too, then.”
Bruce does his best to tune her out and focus on his work. Within minutes of contact, all of the pollen’s effects have seeped out of him. Her body heat is better than a hot water bottle—not that he’ll ever give her the satisfaction of knowing that. For once, Steph has the good sense not to rub it in. She occupies herself for the next hour by scrolling through videos on her phone and making Bruce watch the ones she deems funny enough to force upon him.
“See, that's when you find out it was actually Jenna Darabond who let Deandra into the cheerleader’s bathroom, which is what incited all of the events for the first four seasons!”
“I thought that was Ashley Katchadourian.”
She drags a hand down her face in frustration. “Oh my god, no, Ashley Katchadourian was framed. Do you listen to anything I say?”
“No.” Bruce saves and files away his final report.
Steph yawns and stretches. “Tag out,” she announces, craning her neck in search of Bruce’s next keeper. “Dami, you’re up.”
“No, he’s not.” Bruce stands and cracks his back. He can feel the cold settling back in gradually starting from the moment Stephanie’s body leaves his proximity—another thing he will never admit to. He holds back the resulting shiver. “The pollen’s effects will wear off by morning. I’m fine.”
“You’re not honestly going to bed like that,” Steph says. “Just be a man and snuggle with your child.”
“Let him do what he wants,” Damian says, shrugging. “If he says he doesn’t need it, leave him be. He knows where to find us.”
Thank goodness for Damian inheriting his father’s practicality. Bruce ruffles Damian’s hair as he passes by him towards the stairs. “Good night, son.” Just those brief seconds of contact flood Bruce with warmth. His hand lingers in Damian’s curls for just an extra moment before he departs for the manor.
Bruce climbs into his cold bed and wraps himself in the four comforters mysteriously left by the unsubtle Alfred. All these layers, and Bruce is still freezing. He can’t stop shaking.
Less than an hour of trying and failing to fall asleep later, and Bruce is debating shuffling down the hall to Alfred’s room and climbing into the old man’s bed like he’s ten years old again sniffling after a bad dream. This is ridiculous. Bruce is in his forties now. He’s the head of this household. He’s Batman.
He’s…He’s cold. And he’s alone. That reminder shouldn’t make his chest feel as hollow as it does. He knows it’s just the pollen talking, but no amount of mental strength can overcome the physical ache.
He could whistle for Ace or Titus, which would at least be slightly more dignified than running to Alfred, but Bruce’s teeth chatter too hard for that.
An indeterminable amount of time later, Bruce hears his bedroom door creak open. Footsteps shuffle across the carpet. Then someone—a small someone, too small to be Alfred—climbs onto the bed.
He hears Damian huff. “Where—” Damian has to search through the layers of blankets until he locates Bruce’s shoulder. “There you are. How have you not overheated in all this?”
Bruce latches on like a squid before he’s even aware that he’s moved. He gathers his son up in his arms and lets out a sigh at the instant relief it brings him to have human contact again. Damian is like a warm campfire. It makes the ache in Bruce’s chest soothe and worsen simultaneously, wishing he could have held Damian even just once when he was a baby. He bets it would have felt a lot like this—like his fragmented heart is coming back together.
Still, Bruce has a reputation to uphold. “Y-You didn’t n-need to—”
“I had a bad dream,” Damian cuts him off. He moves in closer, allowing himself to be held tight like a baby koala with its mother. “Can I sleep in here tonight?”
When Damian first moved into the manor, he couldn’t sleep due to the frequent nightmares. Bruce woke up every night to the screams. He would sit up with Damian for hours, keeping him company until he felt safe enough to fall back asleep. They never talked about it. Damian was too prideful back then to admit he was afraid of anything. It’s a trait they share.
“Of c-course you can,” Bruce says, playing along.
“Thanks.” Damian wiggles under the covers, making himself comfortable without leaving his father’s embrace. He uses Bruce’s shoulder as a makeshift pillow. After a few minutes have passed, when Bruce’s shivering has ceased and he no longer feels like he’s freezing to death from the inside, Damian asks, “Better?”
Bruce nods, Damian’s curls brushing the underside of his chin. He sighs, closing his eyes. “Tell anyone about this and you’re grounded.”
Damian muffles a snicker into Bruce’s shirt. “Okay.”