Title:

Fandom: Gotham

Pairing: Bruce/Selina
Rating: T

Disclaimer: I own nothing. And this is unBETAed.

Bruce

6 months ago…

It was one of those rare late summer days in Gotham where temperatures were hovering around the triple digits and threatening to break records. For most of the afternoon thunder had been rumbling in the distance, the occasional sharp crack promising a reprieve from the sultry weather at any moment. Due to the unbearable heat, Bruce had chosen to leave the French doors that lined the East wall of his study open letting the wet breeze and the smell of gardenias and jasmine drift into the study.

Despite the hour, the sky outside was a dark shade of grey and he regretted not having had a fire burning as he stared at the backlit girl sitting on the couch across from him. Selina stared down at the table and the game board between them, her elbows on her thighs, her gloved hands dangling lazily between her parted knees.

When she had arrived around lunch time, she had immediately discarded her jacket and goggles carelessly tossing them and herself onto the nearest couch and nicking the meal Alfred had left him. She had seemed unconcerned with the impact the heavy air was having on her curls, but he had caught glimpses of her trying to tame her unruly curls. She had managed to finger comb half of them back from her face, the dirty roots lending her at least the semblance of control, but the breeze that continued to stir the thin curtains also flirted with the loose curls around her face.

At the moment, she blew an escaped lock out of her eye as she studied the chess pieces ahead of her. They had been playing for nearly an hour- a true testament to Selina's slowly growing patience with him. Early in the match, as was her custom she had went after his pawns ruthlessly destroying that first line despite his intentions to use the French defense. He had let her have her reign despite the fact that he had wanted to tell her what a detrimental set of moves that would prove to be. But something, a completely self-serving thought, had stopped him.

If Selina dominated him at cards, it was only fair that he return the favor.

Without warning, one forearm braced across the table for balance, she quickly reached over the board grabbing one of his secondary pieces. Her upper body was so close to the pieces, they were in danger of knocking over and he had to stop himself from reaching out to steady them. The action had been accomplished so quickly he could only blink as his vision was filled by wide-set green eyes and a halo of wild curls.

"What's this one do again?" she asked, waving his white Rook by her cheek.

She was so close that he could almost smell her which was a usually difficult thing to do as Selina typically smelled of nothing in particular. A convenience he imagined was beneficial in her line of work; one couldn't exactly pick a pocket if one's scent was so easily detectable, whether it was good or bad. The few times he had managed to catch a whiff of her he had been close, dangerously close, and he had quickly made a practice of stepping away before she chose to. Today, she had removed her jacket but the remnants of good leather and girl sweat still clung to her persuading him to stay still and breathe deeply.

She flicked her wrist, letting the bottom of the round chest piece rest playfully against her temple and he heard the metallic jingle of her charms rubbing together beneath the cuff of her glove. He refrained from biting his lip as he understood the sound. She was wearing the bracelet that he had fixed for her which meant that in all likely hood she had no plans to go scheming that night. He felt something in his chest warm at that and not only because it meant she would be spending time with him.

He could see she was growing impatient with his silence and she cocked her head trying to swing an errant curl off of her cheek without losing her balance. The heavy air had coiled it so tightly it was like a honey colored corkscrew. He felt his fingers twitch against his thigh as he had the unnerving impulse to reach up and pull on the lock, a purely experimental gesture, just to see if it would spring back into place, but a crack of thunder close enough to rattle the glass inside the window panes reminded him of who he was and who he was with. Irrational actions like that would do nothing but earn him a literal slap on the wrist and Selina suddenly needing to be elsewhere.

He leaned away from her and swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat.

"I've told you," he explained, reaching up to firmly dislodge the Rook from her grip.

She gracefully shrugged a shoulder as she let him take the piece from her hand. Putting the piece back into its place he tried to ignore the warmth he'd felt from her fingers and the butter-soft leather of her worn gloves.

"Musta forgot," she said, her voice far too innocent to be the truth as she slid gracefully back onto the edge of the couch.

His eyes narrowed as he studied her for a moment and she stared back at him as if she could sit here and do this all day. It hadn't taken him very long into their friendship to discern that Selina Kyle had a very deceptive gaze. He imagined most people assumed it was lazy or apathetic, but he knew, had always known, how much was really working behind those Cossack eyes and that cocky mouth.

"It's still your move," he said, abandoning his posture and mirroring hers, one hand enclosing the other.

Head titling she raised a pale eyebrow at his tone, before she reached for one of her pieces.

"Black Queen takes white Knight," she declared, knocking his Knight over with her pinkie as her piece took its place.

He stopped himself from exhaling as he saw her obvious mistake.

"Are you sure you want to make that move?" he asked, reflexively acknowledging the danger his own Queen posed to her.

"Yeah," she said, picking up the discarded Knight and placing it in the pile of Pawns she had already accumulated.

He watched as she thoughtlessly surveyed the pieces she had captured before looking back to the scarce few each of them still had left on the board.

She was either making a grievous mistake or she was aware of something he was not. He just wasn't sure which and with Selina he probably wouldn't know until it was too late.

He sighed.

"You would sacrifice your only Queen to kill a single Knight," he asked, allowing her to hear his confusion.

"Yup," she said, her full lips curling at the corners in a way that despite the predicament never failed to make his heart beat a little faster.

Brows drawn together he glanced down at the board and then back at her.

"It's just… Do you think that's really the best decision," he said, trying to keep the haughtiness from his tone, but worrying that he had failed.

"You just let me, worry bout me, kiddo," she replied, crossing one leg over the other as she relaxed back into the couch. "Your move."

He clenched his jaw as he kept his opinion to himself. Instead he studied her overly relaxed posture, taking note of her lack of nervous tells. He had done the sporting thing, he had given her the chance to change her mind, but as she was want to do she had refused.

You lose your Queen. You lose the match.

It was that simple.

He had told her that before. He had warned her. There wasn't much more he could do if she was not willing to heed his advice. He was going to win, but there was never much satisfaction in winning anything so easily.

Swallowing, he dragged his Queen across the board, seamlessly trading one Queen for the other.

Silently he placed it with the others he had collected before he folded his hands together again. He didn't feel smug and he had no plans to gloat so he just stared down at the pieces left on the board.

"Black bishop takes White Queen." she said.

Bruce felt his jaw loosen at her statement and his eyes widen as she used the end of her Bishop to knock over his Queen.

She smiled at him mischievously, the tip of her tongue running over her teeth, as if this was all just a private joke but one she only shared with herself.

Frowning, he looked down at his fallen Queen lying so uselessly on the checkered board, lost among his other players.

He had never seen it coming.

"Why?" he asked, not entirely sure what he was asking. "Why sacrifice your Queen just to get to mine?"

She looked up feigning concentration for a moment before her eyes met his across the table. "'cause, I might not have a Queen," she answered, shrugging one shoulder, "but neither do you."

He swallowed looking down at the board. She was right. His Queen was the strongest piece on the board and he used her relentlessly. Tirelessly. She was almost always the center of his attacks, the key to all of his victories. He had relied on her too often, and stripped of her he suddenly felt confused and lost.

The next series of moves would prove how right he had been to be worried. He had tried in vain to hide his frustration as Pawn Promotion - something he now regretted having taught Selina- had forced him to return Selina's Queen to the board. His anger wasn't born from the fact that Selina was beating him, though the idea that the one thing he had managed to best her at was now gone did smart, and he wasn't surprised that she was either.

Selina may have had no formal education, but she had a quick mind and she exercised it every chance she was given. He had never given much thought to Selina learning as much from him as he had learned from her, but the logic behind the idea was sound. It was symbiotic, the more they interacted, the closer to even-handed they became; it was an inevitable circumstance of adapting.

No, he was angry with himself. Angry that he had missed that Bishop, angry that he had left himself so open for an attack. Angry that without his Queen, Selina quickly backed his King into a figurative corner using nothing more than a pair of Pawns and that bastard Queen slaying Bishop.

"Check," she said grinning.

"Mate," he said through gritted teeth.

"Whatsat?" she asked innocently as she slightly wiggled in her seat. It had occurred to Bruce before and was only reiterated in the latent excitement of her body language that Selina Kyle took a particular delight in his frustration.

"It's check-mate," he answered. "You won."

"Yeah, I guess I did," she answered, her pale green eyes bright and playful.

Present…

Bruce let his mind linger faintly on that memory as he stood in the hall outside Selina's closed door, the book he had been reading gripped too firmly in his hand.

He couldn't recall what he had wagered and lost that day, most likely something that he neither wanted nor needed, but he did remember that as he had been falling asleep that night, his mind drifting to mundane images from his day as it always did, something had caught his attention.

He admitted to himself that it had caught his attention for all the wrong reasons, the same reasons that still made his face flush and his heart beat a tattoo inside his chest. Even now, he had such a clear picture of her bending over the table, her lips parted just enough that he could see her sharp white teeth, her curls shoved to one side, her body so close to the game pieces that they were almost hidden that he could feel his cheeks heat.

As discombobulating as those images were they only served to remind him of the moment that he had realized that as she had been leaning towards him, peeking out between those dexterous fingers of hers had been the head of a Bishop and sitting on the backline a between her Knight and her King had been Black Pawn, a Black Pawn where no Pawn had any right to be.

The fact that Selina had cheated had not surprised him. Her moral compass was closer to a weathervane, it typically moved with the wind and rarely if ever pointed north. He was not shocked or confused by her actions, only by his own visceral response to them. He understood that he should have been upset with her. Both his competitive nature and his sense of justice should have left him disgusted and piqued or that very least embarrassed, but he had found himself mildly amused by her trick.

She had somehow gotten the best of him. Again. And the only things that had seemed to be interested were his curiosity on how she had accomplished it and that more primitive part of him that he still tried to ignore.

Even now, as he brought his hand up to rapt on the door, he was aware that he could not quite seem to disentangle himself from those emotions, but he knew that he must. He had no choice, he had to be smart and he had to be vigilant.

Selina had already made the first move.

Selina

Selina had never considered a week a long period of time. She tended to gauge time less by a clock or calendar and more by her needs and her wants. When you lived by your own schedule time became relatively meaningless, days turned into weeks and weeks into months and months into years pretty seamlessly. People who lived nine-to-five lives typically charted their time by weekends and paydays and she could somewhat see the appeal in that kind of structure, but that life wasn't for her. She didn't think about it much, but she could only assume it never would be.

Trusting Alfred with her care giving hadn't been a very hard decision for Selina to make. According to Bruce, Alfred had saved her life and 'had worked tirelessly to restore her health,' but in spite of Bruce's claims and the fact that he was Bruce's guardian she hadn't expected Alfred to be so good at playing nurse maid. She had thought it was something easy to imagine from Bruce, just like curiosity care giving seemed to be somewhere in his nature, but she had never seen it coming from Alfred. But that didn't make following his rules any easier.

The first day had been the worst. For the entire day, even though she had been perfectly conscious, the man had denied her any form of entertainment.

No reading.

No talking.

Nothing.

The Old Man had suggested that she not even open her eyes until her sensitivity to light and sound had faded. Personally Selina wouldn't have exactly called it 'sensitivity' herself, it was more of a constant throbbing punctuated by the random slice of pain so she really hadn't minded the isolation at first. Her head had hurt too badly for TV and her ankle and shoulder had been punishing her for what she had put them through the day before, but eventually the darkness and the quiet had begun to eat away at her.

She had tried not to dwell on her time in captivity: the inky blue darkness, the unusual food, the hours of her life that had been stolen and wasted. Dredging up the memories seemed to only leave her breathless, shaky, and feeling as if something was clawing its way up her throat. She also tried hard not to think about the other two kids who had been down there with her. The bright young things that had not been as lucky or maybe just not as ruthless as herself.

There was nothing for any of that now and besides brooding over things out of one's control was Bruce's thing, not hers.

On the second day, when her head could handle more noise than the house's bones groaning and sighing and she was nearly brought to tears from boredom Bruce had shown up.

It had been such a mixed bag seeing him standing so casually in the doorway. Half of her had been delighted. Half of her had been uneasy.

"Alfred said you were feeling better," he had explained as he had lingered in the doorway. "Would you like some company?"

She had been prepared, had armed herself for Bruce's inevitable questions, but they hadn't come. He'd walked into her room as if he hadn't been interrogating her days before. Feeling paranoid and contrary, she'd thought of asking him about his sudden change of heart. Bruce Wayne didn't just give up. It wasn't in his nature.

The boy had spent the last two years looking for his parents' killer and had so far hit nothing but roadblocks and dead ends, including her, and somehow after every set back, he simply just started over. It was an admirable trait, kind of stupid, but admirable. If she were a kinder person she might have described him as determined or strong-minded, but the only words she could conjure when he was being particularly frustrating were stubborn and pigheaded.

On the third day he'd shown up when Alfred had brought her breakfast, his black hair still wet from his shower and looking annoyingly refreshed. She hadn't been able to stop the stab of jealousy she felt at his appearance, she'd felt like no matter how hard she scrubbed she would never be able to get the feel of riverbed out of her pores or the smell of city from her hair.

Again she had waited for the questions and again Bruce had disappointed her. He'd simply sat in the captain's chair by her bed, reading the newspaper and sipping his tea until Alfred had cleared him off.

On the fourth day, she'd been laying in bed after her bath when she'd heard muffled but clearly angry voices. In Bruce's house the walls were thick and the doors made of real wood so all the words were distorted and deformed as if they weren't words at all but grunted thoughts. Eyebrows drawn together, she'd considered climbing to her feet and padding to the door to eavesdrop, but quickly thought better of it. She had a good idea of who was outside her door, had less of an idea on what they were arguing about, but knew with certainly that there was no way on her bad ankle that she could hobble back in time before they entered her room.

She wasn't surprised when Bruce knocked on her door or when he was trailed into the room by an angry looking Alfred. They didn't say anything to each other as Bruce tucked something under his arm and Alfred left her lunch tray on the end of her bed before turning on his heel and exiting the room before making a rather obnoxious show of leaving the door open.

When they argued the tension between Bruce and Alfred was nothing new to her, but it also wasn't something Selina particularly enjoyed. She wouldn't deny that she had her issues with Alfred, but watching Bruce and Alfred fight was something completely different. It was never over something stupid.

Selina tried to enjoy the rest of the day, or as much as she could still bed-ridden and slightly sensitivity, she really did. She tried to ignore the argument she'd overheard and the little voice inside her that refused to just accept Bruce's vagueness on the matter of her "car accident," but she just couldn't.

Hours later when Alfred had returned to tend her fireplace and bring her dinner tray he had conveniently forgotten Bruce's tea. While Selina had pursed her lips at the grey-eyed glare Bruce was directing at his mutinous butler's back as he left the room, because honestly, Bruce could scowl better than anyone she knew, she couldn't help the twinge of paranoia she was feeling.

Maybe it was that left over tension, the endless hours of nothingness, the familiar ache in her ankle or the throbbing pain of her shoulder, but she felt like she couldn't take Bruce's silence on the subject anymore.

"Alright, what's up?" she blurted, shoving her half-empty dinner tray to the bottom of her bed as she sat up. She couldn't stop the slight dizziness that was still clinging to her but she took a deep breath and steadied herself.

"Come again," he countered, looking away from to door for the first time.

Selina barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at his manners so instead she sighed.

"I'd thought you'd be asking me a million questions by now," she accused.

"Questions pertaining to what exactly?" he asked, his eyes moving across her face.

"My accident," she said, waving a hand in the direction of her shoulder.

"Oh, that," he said, lowering the file he had been reading most of the afternoon and nodding his head as he sat back in the chair. There was something very off about the movement, but Selina overlooked it. After all the advice she had given him, Bruce was still a terrible liar and she knew what his tells were.

"Alfred advised me against upsetting you," he explained, his eyes landing on hers.

She stared back at him, applying a little trick she'd picked up from Gordon and using her silence to encourage him to continue.

"And I'm sure that whatever happened, you have your reasons for not divesting yourself of it to me," he continued, raising his chin in that slightly arrogant way of his that always reminded her of where exactly he sat in the world.

"And I assume that you know what you're doing."

Selina had felt as if something very thick was stuck in her throat at his words and she had to clear her throat twice before she could reply, "I always do."

He didn't stay for very long after that, whether it was due to her questions or that Alfred had called him down to dinner she wasn't sure. He'd left like he always did, pausing at her open door and gazing at her for just a moment before he said, "Goodnight, Selina." The sound of his voice and the earnestness of the gesture never failed to make her stomach flutter and all she could ever do was nod in return.

She had to admit to herself that she wasn't too happy with his answer, but for whatever reason Bruce was giving her room to breathe and she knew only idiots looked a gift horse in the mouth.

On the fifth day, he'd been gone for so long that she'd found herself becoming agitated for no apparent reason. She had never really enjoyed another person's presence before, typically she found most people barely tolerable, but being around Bruce was different. It always had been. He never seemed to ask too much of her, or at least nothing more than he would ask of himself. The downside to his 'personal code' was that he also didn't expect any less of her either. It was why Selina continued to stay guarded despite all of Bruce's pleasantries and seeming nonchalance.

Even though she was shedding her ordeal, her bruises showing the first signs of fading and her aches becoming more bearable as each day passed, she'd found herself in a rather sour mood and had just about given up on seeing Bruce at all, when she'd come back from bathing to find the boy setting up a jigsaw puzzle on her empty lunch tray.

Bruce had never been what Selina would have considered 'normal' but if she was honest she wasn't actually sure what the definition of normal was herself, so she had thought it was kinda weird, kinda childish and her single raised eyebrow must have conveyed her feelings because he quickly explained that it would be less taxing on her 'recovering mind' than one of their other usual time killers like cards.

Selina couldn't help but sigh and indulge him when he looked at her like that. "Cards wouldn't be much fun anyway,' she said, climbing onto the opposite side of her bed and looking down at the pieces he'd already flipped face up. "For somebody with as big a' brain as yours, you're pretty terrible at poker."

"Yes," he agreed, grinning at the board as he collected the corner pieces. "If I remember correctly, I already owe you the deed to a 'castle of your choosing.'"

"And your first born," she reminded him, watching his dark eyebrows arch as he collected another piece from her side of the board.

"Of course, how could I forget," he said, snapping two puzzle pieces together.

"And don't think I won't collect," she warned, smirking at his bent head.

"I would expect nothing less of you," he said, sliding her a piece with two of his long fingers.

On the sixth day, Alfred had finally pulled back the curtains flooding the room in grey light although the howling wind had been throwing snow against the window panes. She had been sitting on top of her covers, her now slightly swollen ankle had been elevated on a pillow all morning and out of sheer boredom she'd found herself flipping through one of the books Bruce had forgotten on her nightstand. He was sitting beside her bed, the winter light bathing him in those muted tones that unfairly complimented him so well. For once he wasn't reading a newspaper or a police report or writing in that notebook he'd taken to carrying around. No, he was reading something as normal and boring as a magazine, but as she saw the cover she couldn't help but smile. If he could, Bruce Wayne really was going to teach himself everything that there was to learn in the world.

She closed the book she was reading, letting it fall to her lap. "What in there could possibly be that interesting?"

His eyes looked almost silver as he glanced up over the edge of the cover and she could tell by his gaze that he was weighing the sincerity of her interest.

"It's for educational purposes, not entertainment," he answered, his eyes going back to the pages.

"Okay," she said encouraging him.

"It's an article on the Global Positioning System," he said. "Did you know that we can produce trackers that are as small as your thumbnail now?"

Selina nodded her head, but with no real conviction and because she was feeling bored she asked, "And what's that got to do with you?"

"Not me specifically, but…" he said, his eyes flicking from her face back to the page. "I think it might be of interest to a… Friend of mine."

"A friend?" she asked suddenly intrigued.

"I know I should be insulted by your tone of surprise, but…" he sighed. "Technically he is an employee of Wayne Enterprises," he explained, his eyes moving left to right as he scanned the page. "Regardless, I think he would find it interesting."

Selina stared at him for a moment, and felt the same twinge of sadness that always seemed to bubble up around him. It always hit her so unexpectedly, the sudden reminder of his… Loneliness. She had recognized it the first moment she had met him, all soft voice and kind eyes, and the time he had caught her running away, and in an openly wounded tone had offered to call her a taxi, the sunny afternoon that she had caught him playing chess by himself and he had been so excited to have brought her back a present because it was probably something that he'd seen in a movie or read in a book and then there had been the night when he'd been delirious with fever and she'd cupped his cheek he had called out for her.

"Cool," she answered, her eyes going back to the book in her lap but she wasn't quite able to make out the words.

It was exactly one week to the day after her disastrous afternoon in the kitchen with Bruce that Alfred decided it was time to take out her stitches. She had been dead to the world when the old man had sewed her up and from the looks of it she had counted herself lucky cause if she was going on what she had seen in the mirror she could tell Alfred wasn't going to be winning any cross-stitching awards anytime soon.

She had been sewn up before when she was younger, a suture here, a stitch there, but none really deserved recalling. But as Alfred began to carefully cut and pull the thick medical thread free, she knew she would never forget this and not just because of how she had earned it. She was glad that Alfred had chosen to do it while Bruce was with one of his tutors, because the deep dull ache made her jaw clench and her eyes water until what was left of her fingernails was digging half-moons into her palms.

"You can breathe now, Miss Kyle," Alfred said, dropping the medical scissors onto the towel at the end of her bed.

Selina released a breath she had no idea she had been holding, "Well, that hurt like a son of a-"

"Language Miss Kyle," Alfred admonished, but she could see the slight tilt to his set mouth.

"Sooka, then," she replied, smugly. When he shot her a look she put up both her hands in mock innocence. "Hey, you didn't specify what language."

"Cheeky chit," he said, wiping a very cold antiseptic wipe against her shoulder. Even if he never admitted it, and Selina would put money down that he never would, she suspected that he found her at the very least amusing. "It's gonna scar," he'd told her pulling up the collar of her sweater.

"Won't be the first," she answered, rubbing at the muscle in her opposite arm.

"Or the last, I assume," he'd said, disappointed fatalism in his tone. It was a tone she realized that he was very good at.

Absently, she watched him as he began to clean up and discard the stuff he'd used, but she suddenly winced as the muscle beneath her shoulder was somehow feeling both hollow and painful.

He must've recognized something in her as she attempted and nearly failed to roll her shoulder, because Alfred abandoned his task to step back in front of her.

"Take my hand," he told her, holding out his hand to her and indicating that she should grip it. Shaking her head to demonstrate how silly she found this, she reluctantly did as he asked. Alfred's fingers were warm and calloused where she gripped them, and she couldn't hide her surprise at how weak her own fingers felt around them.

She gritted her teeth at the unwelcome knowledge. Her always so nimble fingers, her confident grip, now felt floppy and useless.

She felt her eyes narrow as her fingers loosened and she tried to jerk away from the butler, but he must have somehow read the shock and disappointment in her eyes because she heard him sigh as he gently lowered her hands to fall into her lap.

"That," he explained, the word coming out as a sigh. "Is going to take a bit longer," he finished.

Selina let out a breath as she looked back at him.

"I think it's time we got you back on your feet Miss Kyle, don't you?"

Author's Note: Constructive Criticism always welcome. If anyone is confused, I changed the "flash backs" because a very nice reviewer pointed out that the italics were too hard on the eyes. Also, I'm so sorry for taking so long to update and that this chapter is kinda meh and weirdly out of my tone. It was seriously an unfocused mess, but hopefully the next few chapters will be a little more exciting as I'm really excited to start flushing them out! They have been some of the most fun to write! : ) Thank you to everyone who is still reading, I seriously do appreciate it.

claire-loves-music: thank you so much, I'm glad you're enjoying it. Selina probably has a ways to go before she trusts Bruce as much as he seems to trust her, but I think she can get there. justreadingforfun: thank you for reading, I'm definitely trying to update more and sooner but hopefully I don't disappoint. AnnieC: You write the nicest reviews, thank you so much for taking the time to read I hope you continue to enjoy Selina and Bruce's little adventure. Fanwriter83: I know its been an age since I updated, but I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint too much. : )