Title: Chapter 28
Fandom: Gotham
Rating: PG13/T
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Gotham, Fox and DC.
Bruce
"Because you have always felt like more."
Despite the fire, a chill climbed up Bruce's spine as the weight of his statement hung between them like a teetering avalanche ready to destroy everything in its path. He knew he shouldn't have said it. His words had been unfair to the bond that stretched between them, to their friendship that was undeniable.
True, she wasn't quite considered family like Alfred and their relationship was far from as formal as the ones he had formed with Lucius and Detective Gordon. Somehow, Selina had always resided somewhere in-between them, in a murky area he never studied too closely. But if he was honest with himself, he had never felt with any of them, what he had felt from the start with the girl standing by his fireplace, silence and mayhem pulled around her in equal parts.
It was such a strange feeling, seeing her so close, only five steps from him, but knowing she may as well have been a mile away.
She had not moved at his confession, not a single muscle, not even a twitch. But he didn't need her to, he could almost feel her surprise. He still couldn't fathom why she was so stunned. His words had been far from monumental. They had been simple and they had been honest. But maybe things like honesty and simplicity were just a little too unfamiliar to them.
They were friends yes, even she could admit that, but at least for him, they had always felt like something more. And after she had kissed him, he had felt like maybe, just maybe, she did as well.
Despite the narrowing of her pale eyes, he took a step toward her, gaining back some of the ground he had ceded. If he was in for a penny, he may as well be in for a pound, as Alfred was want to say.
"And I think you feel the same way."
She did nothing to conceal her surprise at his statement, lifting a single brow skeptically.
"You do."
"Yes, I do," he answered plainly, squaring his shoulders as he slid his hands into the pockets of his pajama pants.
Her head cocked to the side and he knew whatever she was about to say, that he most likely did not want to hear it.
"For being a genius," she said, "you don't really know much, do you?"
Confusion brought him up short and his hands slid free. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, you and me," she said, nonchalant as her gaze drifted to the opposite wall, "We don't fit."
"In what way don't we fit?"
"In a million ways," she said, turning pale eyes back to him, "Alfred was right, Bruce," she pressed before he could interrupt, "You need to be with some like-like you."
"Someone like me?" he asked, confusion and anger beginning to creep along his overwrought nerves. "Selina, you are like me."
"How? How in the hell are we anything alike?" She scoffed. His words seeming to ignite a fire in her as she quickly cut the distance between them.
He wanted to take a step back, retreat from the vehemence in her words, at the frustration in her inflection, but he stood his ground, even if his thoughts were whirling too fast to catch and hold onto.
How in the hell are we anything alike?
The question rolled over in his mind without a concrete answer to give. How could he convince her to see something that he didn't fully understand himself? How could he simplify something so complicated, describe something so intangible?
"I can't explain it," he admitted, cold sweat continuing to break out along his spine.
"Of course, you can't explain it," she accused. "Because it's crazy."
He could only stare back at her in answer. How could she think it was crazy?
"Alfred's right Bruce, you've locked yourself up in here and maybe- maybe you think you feel something for me because you literally never see anybody else. No girls. No boys. Nobody."
The small amount of truth in her statements sent his attention to the floor. Why did she and Alfred believe that their friendship had been born by proximity and not choice or that he needed copious amounts of human interaction to know his own mind? Why did they think that what he felt could not possibly be real?
Taking a deep breath, he took a step toward her. She had held his hand. She had held him. She had let him kiss her and she had kissed him back. If those things had meant nothing, if that wasn't real, he wanted to know. Her affections, flirtations, they had started out so small, so easily misinterpreted by his inexperienced mind, but if what they had wasn't more than friendship he needed to know. He needed to recalibrate, but one of them was going to need to take that first step, and he knew it wasn't going to be her. It probably never would be.
Glancing up at her, he caught sight of her fingertips disappearing into her wide cuffs, and he could see that his prolonged quiet, his silent rebuttal, had deflated some of the anger that had built up in her. Sighing, he let his gaze move to the fireplace. He had never been particularly gifted with words, but he knew what he needed to do even if it ended badly.
"I've never needed people, Selina," he began, already feeling the tell-tale heat crawling up his neck. "At least not how you think; not in the way most people do."
"I've always had trouble developing," he thought back to his earliest moments, of the awkwardness of his fellow toddlers on playdates, the short lived artificial bonds that he had not formed with his short list of nannies. "Sincere relationships."
He forced himself to meet her eyes, though he wanted to look away, to not see the potential emotions that she might let through. But he continued to hold her gaze as she continued to hold his. And it wasn't censure or pity he read in them, it was curiosity and for some unexplainable reason it gave him the courage to continue.
"For the longest time, it was just my parents and Alfred and I thought that that was enough. So, when they-" he felt the words catch in his throat and forced himself to clear it. "After they died, it felt like someone had thrown me into a bottomless pit."
He took a deep breath, slowly stepping away.
"Alfred tried everything. He enrolled me in school, but the curriculum, my classmates, it was worse than before. I was angry all of the time and I couldn't acclimate but I needed to finish my education, so Alfred got me tutors but it didn't really help with…"
He could still remember the rage that had driven him to do such stupid and reckless things. The burns, the cuts, the fights, the rooftop balancing acts… It was a miracle he had lived through it. No, not a miracle. It had been Alfred.
He cleared his throat as he felt the familiar tightness beginning.
"Then one day, Detective Gordon showed up and he had you with him and when I met you for the first time in so long I had felt…"
"Felt what?" she asked, her tone hesitant.
"Something," he said matter-of-factly, "Like my life would never be the same. I had finally found some hope. I'd thought that my parents were finally going to get justice and after I got to know you, selfishly I had begun to think that I had finally found someone that I didn't have to try with."
He nearly glanced away at his own words, but Selina only crossed her arms in answer.
"But then, it had turned out that you had been lying the entire time. And I was so angry at you, and at Alfred, and at Gordon and at everyone and everything…"
He ran a hand through his hair as he tried to wrangle in his thoughts. Those would never be his happiest memories.
"Of course, you were," she said, her arms relaxing by her sides. "Why wouldn't you be?"
His attention darted back to her and he could see the compassion growing in her pale eyes. Somehow, he had known, even when he hadn't, that she would understand. There was a warmth in that kind of knowledge, in the confirmation of something he hadn't been looking for. But he couldn't let it linger, he could only hope she continued to understand.
"But, it never stopped the way I felt about you, Selina," he sighed, as he looked away. "The way I feel about you, as if we're… Connected," he confessed, hoping she would understand this too. "As if you see me, the real me, and you don't pretend that I'm fine, or treat me like a child, or walk on eggshells around me. You know what I am and you don't flinch, you don't pity me, you don't…"
"I don't what?"
He looked her right in the eye.
"You don't look at me as if I need fixing," he confessed. "When you look at me, you see me, and I see you too."
He held his breath, scared that he had gone too far. That he had said the wrong thing, that he had given her all the reason she needed to run. But she stood her ground and the sudden flare of color in her cheeks made her look far more innocent than he knew she was, but when she spoke her words were just as cold as he'd dreaded.
"Really?"
"Really," he confirmed, ignoring the cynicism in her question. "I care about you, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to your vices," he paused to let his statement sink in, "You've never been nice or harmless and you sure as hell don't put others first even when you probably should-"
"Wow B, you really know how to make a girl swoon," she said, her words flippant but her fists bunching beneath the oversized cuffs of her sweater.
"I wasn't finished," his said, instilling his delivery with the steel he felt he needed. "You're not perfect Selina, but you're far from heartless. I know you wish everyone thought you were, that you wish I thought you were, but I don't. I know you."
He watched her head tilt toward the fire at his words, at his truths.
"You con and you steal, but I have never known you to prey on the weak. I've seen you do things for reasons I may never fully understand, but you have never targeted anyone helpless. I know you've had to survive and fight for everything, and yet you're not nearly as jaded as you want to be."
Her eyes moved from the fire and the anger he saw in them nearly had him stepping away from her. "Are you done?" she asked caustically.
"No," he said, squaring his shoulders, "I'm not."
"Well, I am," she said, definitively, unfolding her arms as she started toward his bedroom door. She passed by him, and he almost reached for her, but thought better of it. He wasn't going to try and hold her, but he hoped she would at least-.
"Please, hear me out."
"Why?" she asked, her expression exhausted as she whirled back toward him. "So, I can finish listening to what a selfish asshole I am."
"No, that's not-" he cut off his own words as he took a much needed breath, "Please."
"Fine," she said, her hand gesturing for him to continue.
He knew he should have been grateful for the opportunity to explain himself or at the very least intimidated by her potential reactions, but he was surprised to discover that he felt neither, just a need to finish what he had started.
"I know you want to deny it, and by all means do, but if you were really as uncaring as you claim to be, then you would have never told me the truth about what you witnessed that night. You would have strung me along, rung everything you wanted from me, something as monetarily invaluable as a conscience wouldn't have gotten in your way."
Something like guilt flickered across her pinched features at the reminder. They never spoke of her lie or why she had chosen to tell him the truth, but as she looked away all anger and beauty he knew he needed to press before he lost his advantage.
"I don't know if you want me, not," he took a deep breath, "not in the way that I want you, but I don't think you're nearly as indifferent to me as you want to be.
"And I think you hate yourself for it."
Her head swooped up as she stared at him and her reaction was all he needed. He could see it now, the legitimacy in his statement, that they both could. But that wasn't all, and he rushed forward afraid to lose any of the momentum he had found.
"You see it as a weakness, you do, and you hate it."
She stared back at him, their truths sitting between them, laid bare, but somehow still so muddled. He didn't know how to make himself any clearer. How could he make her see?
"Selina, I've felt entangled with you for so long that I wouldn't know how to start unraveling myself and I don't want too."
Once again, she was motionless, her eyes lowering to the floor, but not like an animal cowed, but like an angry tiger ready to pounce.
"You and Alfred seem to think that because I haven't been around other people that I couldn't possibly know myself, but it isn't true. I know what I want and just because I haven't felt this way about someone before doesn't make the way I feel about you any less real."
Her eyes stayed fix to the floor before him, but he could see the tension leaking from her, in the slight dip of her shoulder and the flexing in her small fingers. But she said nothing. Her only signs of life, the deep rise and fall of her chest.
They were both tired. He could see it in the shadows beneath her eyes, in the quivering in her mask. She was like him. She felt too deeply, but she had always been better at covering it up. She was so skilled in her deception that sometimes he couldn't tell if she cared about anything at all, but then he would see them, the cracks, and the crevasses in her perfect disguise.
He could see them now, but as her silence stretched he could feel the skin along his cheekbones beginning to burn. He could only inhale and exhale to combat the heat, but if she continued he was sure he was likely to sweat through his shirt again.
He had never felt the need or the want to fill quiet so quickly before.
"But if you don't, if you don't feel the same way then I won't- "
"Then you won't what?" she asked, her voice both hoarse and accusatory.
He took a deep breath. Once again, he hated saying what he had to say, but it needed to be said. "Then I won't bring it up again."
She only shook her head taking a step back, but the distance between them felt like a punch to his gut.
He knew she wanted to walk away, to climb those stairs, and disappear into the night. She stood only ten paces from the door, from the escape she so desperately wanted, and she had always been quicker, but if she chose to go he had no plans to stop her. He would not even entertain the idea.
He could see it, see that she wanted to deny everything he had accused her of and maybe had it not been near dawn, he would have found it amusing, but nothing was amusing when the sun was so close to rising.
She crossed her arms, usually such a defensive posture, but the early hour must have been getting to her too because he could see the firm grip she had on her elbows and the look of panic in her eyes born from things he may never understand. It was beginning to take a toll on her, resisting her instincts to run, but she must have read something in his face, because her eyes softened as she took a deep breath.
"Look Bruce, it doesn't matter what I feel because this," she said nodding her head to indicate the two of them, "You and me. It won't work."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Why would it?" she said dryly. Her bottom lip sinking beneath her teeth as her eyes moved to the ceiling as if it would somehow give her the answer. When she turned back to him, there was a defeated look he had never seen behind her mask. "It won't work because," she gave a morose chuckle. "I can't believe I'm saying this again, but Alfred was right Bruce, I'm not the kind of friend you need much less anything else. You need someone who gets your world and I just don't. I'm not sure I ever will."
That wasn't true, not even in the slightest, but he wouldn't argue with her. There was no purpose in giving her reasons, when she had no intent to listen to them. Like any good debater, Selina was only focused on her own side, which told him more than enough.
He knew from personal experience that people who recycled arguments had no interest in any point of view but their own. There was no discussion, as they never had any intention of ceding their point. Like himself, she may have been using different words and coming at it at from different angles but she was attacking the same problem.
Disappointment settled like a stone in his gut as he stared back at her. She should have looked soft in the firelight, her tunic sweater swamping her in cream cashmere and her tights and socks making her look like she should have been bundled up at a ski lodge.
And maybe to someone that did not know her, someone who did not care about her, they would not see what he could see that even in the trappings of a comfortable life, she still looked wild and beautiful and the kind of danger that Alfred was always trying so desperately to keep him from. A danger that ate at the corners of his mind and preyed on his curiosity, a danger that he was drawn to but could clearly never have.
"I suppose you and Alfred have it all figured out then," he couldn't keep the caustic tone from his speech.
She only shrugged, fueling the temper he fought to keep in check.
"And so what we want doesn't matter," he asked.
"Has it ever?"
"I suppose not," he said.
Bruce could do little but agree with her now. He had read this entire situation wrong. Humiliation stung his eyes, and he forced them close and lowered himself into the closest chair. There was something freeing in letting the potent feel of disillusionment take a grip of him. He had felt this before, many times before, when Detective Gordon had admitted that they had caught the wrong man, when Selina had confessed to seeing the man without his disguise... The list could go on and on, but he had no time and no desire to revisit them all.
Despite the heat flaring all over him, he knew it would be unfair to hold this against her. This argument, this realization, it had been about distrust and class divisions and things that they had never really confronted before. It was about so much more than her rejecting his suggestion for more.
Regardless of what people thought of him, he had been told no before. Not often, but he had. This argument, these feelings, they weren't about that. He had always known rejection was on the table and he had admitted what he had felt anyway. What he still felt despite her reaction, her complete disregard of his feelings and his friendship.
What a child he had been, how naïve, how outright stupid, to think that she had felt something, a connection, that had never existed. How had he miscalculated so severely? How had he thought… How had he thought she had seen more, that she had looked past his name, past his money, past his… problems. But maybe they were both right, maybe his life was too much to ask her to disregard, maybe his life was too much to ask anyone to disregard.
Abandoning the etiquette lessons he had been raised with, he hunched forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he let his gaze roam over her fire-lit profile. How had he read her so wrong?
"You know I didn't think it mattered to you," he said, his words coming out flat.
"What didn't matter?" she asked, and could hear the exhaustion and curiosity mirrored in her own tone.
"All of it? Any of it?" he answered.
As if his words had sent an electric charge through her, she quickly straightened, all signs of the night disappearing. "Of course, it matters," she snapped back, her indignation apparent in her voice and the sound of her restless steps. "It matters a lot!"
"To you, it matters to you," he retorted. "It never mattered to me."
"Well, good for you, Bruce Wayne," she replied. "It must be real nice to only see what you want."
"I'm not blind, Selina," he argued, resisting the urge to return to his feet.
"Maybe not, but Bruce the day you were born it was prolly front page news. I was left on a stoop with a note and a necklace, so you sure as hell, have no idea what it's like to be on the other side of the poverty line, much less what it's like to be stuck there, to live in it day after day."
He wanted to argue with her, to prove her wrong, but he couldn't. She was right. He could read and listen and educate himself to what it was like to live on the streets, to live a life of survival and not comfort, but he could never really know what it was like. But those thoughts were for another day, not tonight.
Tonight, had been about them, about all the obstacles he had never known had lain between them. Obstacles that he had never even considered. When they had started, he had thought they were friends, thought that they could be more than friends, but he was beginning to question if they were even that.
He suddenly felt like a raw nerve and if the pain in her face were any indication so did she.
"You win, Selina, you have made yourself more than perfectly clear," he conceded. "No reason to elaborate any further."
"So, that's it," she asked and he could hear a note of something like panic in her words, but couldn't bring himself to open his eyes.
"That's it," he answered, giving in to the exhaustion that had plagued him all night as he leaned back in his chair.
He could hear her footfalls as she approached his closet, so soft and light and nothing like the girl that they belonged to and then their sudden pause as she reached the hidden door. Bruce felt shame rush over him as for the first time in his life he wanted her to go. Tomorrow they would start again. Tomorrow they would reset. But for tonight, or what little was left of it, he wanted to be alone.
Breathing deep, he let his eyes drift shut as he waited for the door to open, for her to make the escape she had been so desperate for, but the sound that broke the heavy silence was not her absconding, but her voice, raw and angry and like nothing he had ever hear from her.
"So, were not even friends anymore," she stated.
Involuntarily his head came up as his eyes popped open at her absurd accusation. She was staring at him in disbelief and he could see something in her eyes, in her posture, a defensiveness that he had not seen since those first few days he had known her.
"Of course, we're still friends," he reassured, despite wanting to bark at her for having so little faith in him. "An unrequited crush is nothing to jeopardize our friendship over."
She nodded her head, and he couldn't bear to watch her walk away, but just as she went to push the hidden spring, she paused again, "It's not."
Her statement confused him, but he had little patience for guessing games and riddles. No, a part of him simply wanted to ignore her, to be left alone to lick his wounded heart, but he had never been good at ignoring Selina Kyle and tonight was no different.
"It's not what?" he asked.
For a moment, she only stared at the hidden panel beneath her hand as she took a deep breath letting it out audibly, and then taking a step away from it. "It's not completely unrequited."
Anger sliced through him, unexpected and shameful. There were few things he would not tolerate, but he would not stand for this kind of charity. Not from her. "I don't want your pity Selina."
"Good," she said matter-of-factly, taking a step closer to him, "'Cause I wasn't giving you any."
Her answer, her reaction, puzzled him and for one moment Bruce simply watched as the dying firelight danced across her skin and the color that had drained returned to her cheeks. He knew there was something in her words that he wasn't gripping, an inherent social cue that he still had no frame for.
What was she trying to say?
Could she mean -
"So, you're acknowledging that you might actually care about me," he asked, his own words a mixture of anger and curiosity.
"I never said I didn't care about you, Bruce," she admitted, her voice unexpectedly softer.
"You didn't give me any evidence you felt otherwise," he accused, matching her tone.
"You decided to tell me you've been spying on me for weeks, and that you like me all at the same time, that's a lot to take in in one night."
Guilt and wounded pride heated his face but he couldn't really feel remorse for what he had done. "I never spied on you, but if I remember correctly, you were the one found hiding inside my closet."
"I wasn't spying," she said, her cavalier words not matching the pink blossoming in her cheeks.
"Then what would you call watching me and listening to my conversations through the door?"
"Collecting information," she countered, and as he watched one socked foot take another step closer to his chair, he noted the nonchalant almost arrogance in her remorselessness.
"Collecting information," he echoed. "What information could you have possibly gained from that?"
"More than I'm going to ever tell you," she said, an almost teasing note as she saddled herself beside his chair.
He looked up at her, but didn't attempt to move over, to give her room. His chair, though large, wasn't nearly big enough to seat them both side by side, and he doubted she wanted to sit with him anyway.
"So, what do you know?" she asked, suddenly. "About what happened."
"Not much," he admitted, and it was the truth. Despite everything he had dug up, every book and article and half-formed theory he had followed. His knowledge of what had happened to her was still next to nothing.
"Truly?" she asked, her eyebrows arching.
"Truly."
She sighed, a gesture he was sure her exhaustion had let slip through. "Then, let's keep it that way."
"But Selina, if-"
"If nothing Bruce," she said, looking down at him, "This is my life not yours."
When she looked at him like that, unwavering determination and iron will, despite their history, he trusted her to know what she was doing. She was right, this was her life, and maybe, Alfred was wrong, maybe this wasn't about her trust in him, maybe this was about something else.
"I think, I understand," he said, suppressing a sigh of resignation.
"Do you?" she asked. Her gaze so direct, so intense, that had he not known her, he may have felt fear.
"Not entirely, but I'll try."
She continued to stare down at him, those calculating green eyes trying to decipher something in him, trying to find the answers to questions she had never asked. She looked contemplative, her quick mind running scenarios and outcomes, checks and balances. He saw the moment it happened, the tick in her cheek, the slight curl to her lip as she finally unlocked whatever she had been looking for.
"Good," she said, and Bruce wasn't sure what he'd said or what he'd done, but it must've been the right thing because before he could blink, she had perched herself on the arm of his chair. She was so close that he could almost smell her and when she spoke there was a warmth in her voice that made him gulp.
"So, you've really thought about this, huh?" she asked, waving a hand to gesture between them.
At her casual reference, Bruce couldn't stop a self-depreciating smile from curving his lip before he answered, "More often that I'm willing to admit."
He watched the edges of her mouth curl up before she sobered again, "Look I don't like labels or whatever in the hell you want to call it and I'm sure as shit not going to be shoved into some box, not by you or anyone else."
Despite her nearness, he felt slightly wrong footed at her accusation. "That was never my intention," he said quickly. "I just needed to know."
"Needed to know what?" she asked, his confusion reflected in her.
"That what I felt, that it wasn't one sided. That I wasn't delusional to think that you might feel the same way."
At his confession, she said nothing, only looked down at him from her perch. Nervous energy thrummed along his veins, as her wide set eyes and full lips once again became a language he couldn't read. He had studied her so often, had narrowed down so many of her masks, so many of her posturing shields, so many of her deceptive motions, that to be once again shut out was unnerving.
"You're not completely wrong," she admitted, "But, you kept notes on me B, that's pretty messed up."
"I didn't keep notes on you. I kept notes on your attack," he said, making sure to distance himself from any misconstrued accusations of voyeurism.
"Really?" she asked, like an exacerbated mother.
"I was trying to help."
"I know you were," she turned toward him, her arm moving behind to prop against his headrest, "that's the only reason I didn't lose my shit on you."
He could feel her fingers whispering along the skin of his nape, but he resisted the urge to lean back. "I'm not going to apologize for trying to do what's right."
"Of course, not," she said, her words not matching her actions as stroked him affectionately, and it took everything in him not to turn into her touch, "How could I forget it's harder getting an apology from you than a compliment and those are like pulling teeth."
"That's not true," he said, turning toward her.
Selina scoffed, "Sure, it's not."
He stared back at her, and for the first time he could the slight hurt beneath her mirth, the real belief behind her facetious tone. How could she not know how he felt about her? How could he have been so unintentionally obtuse?
"You know how I feel about you Selina, I don't need to spell it out."
"Let's say you did," she drawled, and as he watched he began to see the playful gleam in her eye develop as she waited for his reply. She was a lioness with her eyes on an easy kill. "I mean you kind of owe me don't you."
For one moment, he could only look back at her. She had been accurate when she had said there were things between them, good and bad, and some in areas he wasn't sure about. There were certainly things they needed to talk about, but even now he saw nothing insurmountable. Both she and Alfred were right, nothing about them would be easy, but when had he ever liked things easy.
It was a new feeling for him to be so unsure of himself, but he knew what he felt about her and if she was so determined to pull the truth from him, then he was willing to oblige.
"I've never known anyone like you. Someone that has survived what you have, that lives life on your own terms, that is unbearably honest with me even when it doesn't benefit you," he began and he instantly felt her hand still in his hair, her entire body frozen, as if she had suddenly found herself on the edge of a knife.
"You're a self-professed thief and yet you're still one of the few people that I trust, and sometimes when I look at you, for one minute, it feels like I can't breathe and then you say something so clever and intelligent and I worry that…"
Taking a sharp breath, he felt the heat flaring in his face as he barely caught himself. He couldn't set those words loose. Not now, maybe not ever.
"That what?" she asked.
Sighing, he looked away from her. "That I more than just like you."
Quickly, he closed his eyes as he felt her fingers gently tighten in his hair as she tipped his head in her direction. He didn't want to look at her. He couldn't. He couldn't see the condemnation in her answer. Once again, he had somehow laid himself bare and he couldn't –
Whatever thoughts had been racing through his mind abruptly derailed as he felt the warmth of her lips cover his own. For a single heartbeat, he had felt lost and found and everything in between.
Selina
For just a moment the world tilted beneath Selina as she sunk into their kiss. She knew she would probably regret it, but she had needed to stop him. Stop him from saying words, words that she wasn't ready to hear, words that she couldn't hear, beautiful words that he was likely to take back later.
She'd been born in a viper pit and raised among wolves, but even she had a breaking point. Who knew it might be a beautiful boy just as messed up as she was, because she sure as hell hadn't.
But those were thoughts for another time, a time when his lips weren't pressed so gently against her own.
She could still feel his surprise, in the tentative way he parted his lips and the gentle press of his hand as he found her waist. She didn't jump at his touch, didn't pull away as the heat of his grip reached her through her sweater. It was so warm and so soft, she could feel a sense of loss as she pulled away from.
He looked so lost as she pulled away from him that Selina knew she had done the right thing. They needed to be on the same page and then they could… Then they could…
Her thoughts nearly trailed off as she leaned her forehead against his own.
"I'm confused," he admitted, his sweet breath brushing her chin.
"No labels," she whispered against him mouth hoping he understood, "Just us."
"Just us," he agreed and relief flooded through her as she took another sip of him.
Curiosity had always been one of their worst shared habits and now was no different as their lips brushed one another. She wasn't quite sure what a good kiss should be like, but she knew it wasn't like the uncomfortably smashed faces in his old black and white movies or the disgusting kisses she'd seen given to a john.
No, this was nothing like either of those.
When she pushed for more he yielded and when she pulled away he followed, parting his soft lips before wordlessly asking her to return the favor. It was so soft, so new, so different. She could still taste the mint on him, light and airy and nothing like the hunger coursing through her.
Calloused fingertips brushed a curl from her face and something inside her ignited as she felt him cupping the curve of her cheek. His hair, so dark and so soft, slid between her fingers and before she knew what she was doing, she was falling into him: into his warmth and his touch, his kindness… And his… And his… His everything.
She knew they probably needed to stop and that if she gave herself time to think about it, she'd only start regretting it. Regretting the kiss, the night, the whole damn thing. But she wouldn't. Not right now. Life had robbed her of so much already, her mother, her childhood, hell, sometimes she worried it had taken her very soul, so was it so awful if she took something back for herself. Just a minute. Just a moment.
She pushed all those worries, that future headache and heartache, down, passed the butterflies and the tenderness, and the unexpected ache that had unexpectedly sprouted within her. And it wasn't hard to do when her body was too focused on the warm hand that was almost trembling as it moved down her arm, along her waist again, before landing firmly on the broad side of her thigh. When she felt those long fingers tighten their grip, she couldn't help but smile against his mouth.
There was power in this. She could feel that now.
Babs had once told her there was a certain power in her beauty if she only knew how to use it. But as she pulled back from Bruce, as she saw the look in his eyes, she knew that's not what this was. This wasn't some lust crazed idiot. This was Bruce.
He didn't treat her like something to be acquired, no, he looked at her like he could see through all the bullshit. He could see through all of the crap and somehow, someway, he still liked her.
Biting into her bottom lip she could still taste him, and as his dark eyes tracked, his breath hitched against her side. And Selina felt her own breath still as she noticed her new position: her bottom against his thighs, her feet hanging off the other armrest.
Crap, when had she fallen into his lap?
It was something she should have noticed, but just like in the library and the study and the sunroom or every time she was close to him, the world had once again fallen away, becoming blurry and insignificant.
Forgetting herself had never been a problem before him. It was a dangerous thing to do, something she had been trained against her entire life, but she couldn't bring herself to care as she watched his hooded eyes. But, she needed to swim up from this lake of stupidity and bliss that she had fallen into. They both did.
But his lips, so red and swollen were like a hit of something wonderful, and when one of the edges curled she couldn't help herself but peck the rounded corner.
When he fully smiled against her mouth, the motion only encouraged her more and she felt his hand abandon her thigh to get lost somewhere in her hair.
She couldn't help wanting deeper, of wanting something more than but she knew they needed to stop. If they continued like this, it would be too much, too soon, and they both might end up regretting it. Because if a few kisses had left them this far on the back foot she couldn't imagine what anything more would do to their friendship.
Pulling back from him, she couldn't stop the old man's words from whispering in the back of her mind, as Bruce looked back at her as if she had stolen something from him. He had been right, Bruce did look at her like he was starving, but not like dinner. Bruce was too damn noble for something that thoughtless. No, he was more into giving too much of himself, of trusting too much, of giving second chances to people who sure as hell didn't deserve it.
There was something depressing about that thought, because she knew he wouldn't always be this way… That they wouldn't always be this way. He had to know that. He was a Wayne, he had been born with the world at his fucking feet and she was a nobody from nowhere. Their worlds should've never collided, but somehow they had and here they were.
And here was all they needed for now.
The next time Selina drew away from him, she wasn't sure how long they had been kissing, but as she pulled back further, she noticed the shadows along his angles had deepened and the fire that had been roaring when she had entered had since crumbled to near embers. His cavernous room felt so soft now, a cocoon of firelight and burning pine and the feel of Bruce beneath her.
She brushed a hand through his hair, letting her fingers linger in the soft strands. His eyes had grown so dark, so drowsy, he looked as if she had slipped him something. She had never seen them look so black, or so… resigned.
Something too close to fear shot through her as she saw the rare dejection in them, like his next words were going to be one of his biggest regrets.
He closed his eyes as if it was hard to look at her as he rested the side of his forehead against her shoulder. She could feel his breath on her neck, sneaking beneath the collar of her sweater, and it should've been a warm comfort, but the look in his eyes had left her frozen.
He inhaled deeply, before pulling away as he let his head fall back against the head rest.
"Alfred will be up soon," he said, voice so rough it was almost unrecognizable.
Confusion gripped her for just a heartbeat, before she almost laughed at her own paranoia. Despite the curving twists and turns the night had taken, they were still somehow them. Of course, his disappointment and regret would match her own. Seeing the confusion mirrored in his own face, she thought that maybe, he was right, maybe they really were alike.
Chuckling despite her disappointment she leaned into him.
"You kicking me out," she teased, resisting the urge to run her nose along his hairline. This close, his smell was almost enveloping her and he smelled so good. Too good.
"Never," he replied, turning his head as she felt a tingle run up her spine as his grip momentarily tightened on her hip. The heat that crept along her skin was so foreign she knew only time would help her identify it.
Staying here, staying with him, this whatever it was, was dangerous, but when had she ever shied away from danger. But she knew it was a bad idea, because it was too later or too early and if Alfred caught her in here she didn't think she or Bruce would have a choice if she was gonna keep staying here or not. She couldn't blame the old man, if she was in his shoes she would keep Bruce away from her too.
Unable to resist, she leaned forward, brushing his cheek with her lips, but when he turned his head for more she bit her lip. If she started to kiss him again, she didn't know when she would stop and then Alfred would definitely catch her in here.
"I should go," she whispered, starting to disentangle herself from his lap.
She felt rough fingertips grip her own as she climbed to her feet. For one moment, she thought that Bruce was trying to pull her back into his lap and she almost relented but as she looked into his eyes she knew different.
"Please, stay," he said, tightening his hold, "just a little longer."
"And watch Alfred have a conniption, no thanks," she joked.
"That's not what I meant," he explained, rising to his feet, his grip growing firmer. "And you know that."
She hated that she had known exactly what he had meant. And she hated that he knew she had known what he had meant. She wasn't sure she had ever realized how well he could read her, or how she felt about it. But she didn't look away as she pulled him forward.
"I wasn't planning on jetting," she said, only half-a-lie.
"Yes, you were," he said matter-of-factly, but his voice had an unfamiliar tone to it as if he didn't hold that half-truth against her.
She could only shrug in return, gripping him tighter as she pulled him toward his closet door.
She wasn't sure why she was dragging him behind her. His words had caused twin embers of doubt and regret to flare inside her. This was a bad idea touching him, kissing him, telling him things that were better left unsaid. Nothing good could come of it, just aches and the loss of a friendship she hadn't known she wanted.
Just the idea of wanting someone put her on edge. Reminded her of things outside these walls, the world that had kept turning despite their best tries at ignoring it.
"I have to go back," she blurted, as that hollow pit inside her began to ease back open.
"I know."
His answer felt like a balm as it brushed against her nerves, that reminder of his
willingness to let her run and his understanding of why she had to.
It was that same combination that had had her turning back from the door earlier. That knowing that he would put his wants aside, that he would let her go to keep them intact. She had never had any intention of doing it, but somehow he had found a way to pass a test she had never given.
It was that same knowledge that had her turning back to him now.
"But maybe not today," she said, looking up at him.
She watched the realization dawning over his dark features. The surprise, the relief, and the something more that had him leaning down and pulling her to the tips of her toes as he pressed his lips to her own.
It was only when dawn began to spill pink across the floor and she felt his fingers cupping her face again and that intoxicating combination of his touch and his smell pulling her under, that she knew it was beyond time that she left.
"Alright, I really gotta go," she said, and she couldn't help the awkward pat she gave to the shoulder beneath her palm.
"I know," he repeated.
Gently biting his bottom lip, he looked down at her as he gently sprung the catch and pushed open his closet's hidden door.
Selina couldn't stop the sudden heat that rose to her cheeks at his look. Even after everything, leaving him, just for tonight, should have been easy, but something tugged on her, like one of those threads that usually lay dormant between them had morphed into a bright new color that she hadn't known existed before.
"Later, B," she said, turning into the small dark room, but before she could take more than two steps inside, she found herself whirling around, reaching back through the hidden door to still one more kiss from him.
It was just a peck, so sweet and so chaste, that she couldn't quite believe it had come from her and before it was over she pushed him away and turned on her heel.
She wouldn't look back this time.
Slivers of morning light had already begun leaking across the walls as she stepped into the tunnel and with no one to witness, Selina finally let the smile that had been threatening her loose. What she was feeling felt almost like bursting from within her and it was such a foreign feeling to her, so new and strange, that she was nearly clear of the tunnels, before she realized she hadn't noticed the cold or the smell or even the rough stones beneath her feet.
She almost laughed at the realization.
What in the hell was Bruce Wayne doing to her?
To Be Continued…
Author's Notes: If you've gotten this far, thank you so much for reading.
Thank you: Frostburn243, Na'vi, Winnie, and Guest 4/30 I really appreciate all of your kind words.