[A/N] I see the requests for more chapters of "What Goes Up Must Come Down," I promise! Foremost, thank you! Second, there are some folks who have been very, very, VERY patiently waiting for their prompts so I want to make sure I knock those out first. Thank you, here's a bit of angst and light sexy times for you. I hope you enjoy!
Bruce had yelled. He'd yelled at her. He'd yelled then walked away with silence bleeding from him.
Regardless of how she framed it, he'd yelled. He hadn't done that since...well, their first encounter about a decade ago. Eight years, to be exact. There'd been loud laughs, exclamations, calls, cries, rare arguments, moans, that one time she screamed, the one time he did, but never yelling. Not at each other, not from him to her.
And yet, he'd yelled. She arrived home and found him in the kitchen. She stood there now, and he didn't. She stood in there, propped against the counter to ease the weight off her sprained, possibly fractured ankle, and realized his yelling over and over. Realized it, because it wouldn't stick, wouldn't attach itself as fact.
She came home, walked into the kitchen with a limp. When he urged her to sit, she shrugged him off. It was him she wanted, not his insistence. She wanted to hug her partner and return to the semblance of normalcy they'd constructed here.
Needless to say, that's not what happened. She got confusion and sting, walked away from, yelled at, too. Contention was to be expected in any long-term relationship, romantic or not, so maybe this was just an ugly side of normal. Butno, not for them. Certainly not this way.
She headed—hopped and limped—upstairs after him. On the floor of their bedroom, leaning against the bed, was where she found him along with a wounded gaze he directed at her, as though her sheer presence was a betrayal.
"You shouldn't be taking stairs right now," he murmured.
She staunched the hurt rising hot in her throat. "Then you shouldn't run away like that."
"I didn't mean for you to follow."
This definitely wasn't normal. If it was, she didn't want it. She detested this hurt and let that show. "I have a sprained ankle—not an infection, not a bullet wound. I'm not sick, I'm not broken. I've suffered worse." The effects of her retaliation cracked across his face like gunpowder. They were like two dueling scorpions. It wasn't in her nature to back down, not until he saw the price of this poison. "You and I both know that. Why make it worse?"
"That's not…" He lifted himself up enough to sit on the bed's edge instead of the carpet. There was plenty of room for her on both sides of him, but she wouldn't take either. Not yet. He continued on, "How am I supposed to be okay with this?"
"This is what I do."
"I know. And you're amazing at it. But it's like you let yourself get hurt."
She terminated the ludicrous notion instantly. "That's insulting. You know me better than that."
"I know you don't think of yourself as a priority. That's how you were raised—"
"Do not—"
"—how you were trained and how you operate. You've more than—"
"It's my job and my body." It was him in retirement, not her. "Nobody but me gets to regulate that—"
"I don't disagree—you're right. Listen. Please." He veered into pleading, "It is your body. It's part of you, and that's important." His expression reached for her, an arm extended over the chasm between them. They're both there in their bedroom, where there was a spontaneous canyon between them. He pushed her, she pushed back, and then they were on opposing sides.
He told her, "You matter to so many people. You mean the world to me. I don't—I don't want a world without you in it." She stared at him and found his gaze full of her. "It's hard to see how your safety doesn't matter to you." The weight of this pushed on him, hunched him forward, elbows on this thighs. "You're a protector. You protect people but not yourself. And I think you deserve that more than anyone. You're worthy of that at least." On that bed's edge, he crumbled. They stared at each other, seemingly stolid as chunks of her impassivity broke off until he couldn't bear it. Bruce collapsed into his palms.
She leapt—limped, technically—across the gap between them, sank onto the mattress beside him, pulled him out of the dark and into her. Their foreheads came to rest on each other. She assured him, "I'm trying to remember that. It's gonna take a while."
His skin shifted against hers in a tiny nod. What came out wasn't an affirmation, but an apology. "I'm sorry."
In the slightest motions, she nuzzled against him, let that speak for her. Aloud, she gently teased, "I really think it's just a sprain."
"I think you would break your spine and call it a sprain."
Laughter effervesced, elevating them to normal in an instant. He caressed her cheek with his nose as she grinned down toward the bedspread. This was what she wanted. Almost.
She slid a hand onto his thigh and gestured to the bathroom with her head. "Come on." To the question knitted into his eyebrows, she said, "I need a shower and would prefer not to fall on my ass."
He didn't need further incentive or explanation. They maneuvered to their feet and to their destination, his arm a support around her waist and one of her hands splayed between his shoulder blades. The assistance wasn't necessary, but his touch was her favorite remedy. That's why she didn't protest when he stripped off his clothes then hers—why she coaxed him on with fingertips in his hair, hungry for him, hungry for his skin on hers, as he scattered kisses down her torso, her hips, her legs. The bruises from their tiff, the soreness that clung on, all began to melt off her. They still had yet to enter the shower, which both of them neglected to turn on for a few distracted moments.
It was when he pressed a kiss to her coarse lower hairs, his forehead nuzzled against her pubic bone and, in losing cognizance to his adoration, almost losing her balance—that's when she had the misfortune of remembering their original intent.
"Bruce," she exhaled, palming his cheeks before coaxing him back up. "As much as I love that, this probably isn't the best place to make me weak in the knees."
"Right." He opened the shower door and turned the water to a tolerable heat. When he returned to her, a bashful veil painted an illusion of shame onto his face. For something so lovely, he tried to apologize, "Sorry—"
She had none of it. She stopped him with her mouth pushing into his, the trace of her tongue against his, the subsequent, ungraceful guidance into the shower and under the lukewarm spray. The temperature shock provided ample reason to tug their bodies as close as possible, their lips breaking apart so she could interject, "In here."
Then he shifted them so cold tile collided with her back. She arched into his warmth, loosely coiled her bad leg around one of his.
Never presumptuous, he asked into their kiss, "Is this okay?"
The tenderness he maintained even in his ardent grip on her hips reaffirmed her belief that he was one of the few people on Earth who could manage such a persistent, gentle thoughtfulness, even when firm. There was absolutely no hesitation or doubt in her nod. There could be no misinterpretation of her fingers raking through his hair, where they formed deltas for the shower stream. He listened to the encouragement, found a way to deepen their kiss, and trailed a hand down to her core.
For a few moments, he simply cupped her, didn't sink a finger in or trace the shape of her. He embraced her, clutching her hip, cupping her, placed two quick kisses to her jaw then ear. She removed one hand from his head to encircle his stiffened length. He returned to her mouth and she nearly sighed an I love you into him, but it was then he dipped a finger between her folds. The pleasant jolt had her clench from her crux down to the leg anchored around him. She exhaled into him, into the steam pouring from the shower's downpour, and began to twist and swirl her drip on his member. He held her and her him as their kisses grew sloppy, their hands fervid and hasty, and she came home and stayed until the water ran cold.