The War of the Orchids
Author's Note: I never expected to return to this little universe but fanfics are like cats. When you least expect them, there they are. I officially now know way more about orchids than I ever expected and... since I started at zero, well, there may be errors. And yes I am a total dork, this fic name is ridiculous and I AM NOT ASHAMED!
Beta: Big thanks to Ms. J for all her invaluable help.
Summary: All relationships have their rough spots. But only theirs is a war. Because Batman.
-BWSK-
Batman stepped out of his car and inhaled deeply, his shoulders loosening and slumping as the security system re-engaged with a soft hum. And then his eyes narrowed beneath his cowl.
Wait.
Something was wrong.
He cast a careful eye around the expanse of the cave. A covered dinner plate was at his work station. The mess Tim had made earlier in the southwest corner, tinkering with a project he was extremely secretive about, was neatened up. The training area was set back to rights, having seen heavy use by Cassie while he was out on patrol. The lights were off where they should be off.
Wait.
The northmost corner of the cave held a dozen, six foot tall, circular specimen displays. Four were dark and empty. Seven were properly lit. And one.
One.
One was missing the glass enclosure, the light fixture clearly having been replaced, and there was a painted clay pot with a budding orchid - a powerfully citrus scented rhynchostilis gygantea - set right smack in the center of the metal display plate.
His lip furled.
That impossible woman.
Prior to their engagement, after their endless stage of "will they won't they" (as Dick called it, usually behind Bruce's back but sometimes right to his face), and during their equally endless stage of "off and on and off and on", Selina had never spent the night at Wayne Manor. She had come for breakfast, stayed for dinner, stopped by for a movie and Alfred's scones, but she always, always left when he went on patrol – sometimes going with him.
It was he who tended to crash at her place after after a long night of taking out crooks, chasing down Arkham escapees and occasionally conferring with the Commissioner.
Her place was a renovated, two bedroom condominium in Chelsea, near the art galleries (a terrible terrible place to allow Catwoman to live), in a one hundred year old building. The condo was nothing he expected and yet everything he expected. It was a mixture of all the most modern finishes and carefully selected antiques, all black and white softened by dark woods and splashes of merlot accessories. There was only one cat – Mercy. And far more plant-life than he would think anyone acquainted with Poison Ivy would ever want around – a shelf of herbs in the kitchen, a pot of golden pothos that Selina trained across the living room entryway, a couple of diffenbachias next to the living room windows, and orchids.
There were orchids in every room.
And three in the bedroom. A brassavola nodosa (because it made Selina giggle to have a plant called Lady of the Night), and two zygopetalum.
The scent that filled Selina's inner sanctum was floral, pervasive. It wasn't delicate nor was it cloying but it settled in, permeated her cotton bedsheets and fuzzy blankets, seeped into the dark cloud of her hair.
He would wrap an arm over her midsection, the covers tucked in around them, and her unbound locks would nestle against his cheek, silky soft. And his muscles would loosen, his joints unlock, and he'd descend into sleep.
He asked her once, on a late, sleepy morning, why the orchids, and she laughed, saying "You're the world's greatest detective. You figure it out." He may have done some reading after that. Her other houseplants were easy to keep, hard to ruin, but the orchids, the orchids needed what they needed and wouldn't thrive otherwise. He thought maybe she related to that, and then he thought that maybe she just liked them.
It was months later that they got engaged, the setting from his grandmother's ring reworked with a two karat, conflict-free, emerald-cut diamond flanked by shards of sapphires and aquamarines and a story that he had forbidden the kids from sharing with the League or any of its junior groups, and Selina officially moved in.
It wasn't very long before he started noticing signs of her presence outside of their bedroom. New, striped green pillows appeared on the den couches. The small parlor room facing into the back of the estate sported a desk with the latest Wayne Tech PC and one of her black cashmere cardigans now hung on the chair. The setup in the above ground gym shifted to accommodate her aquamarine yoga mat.
He knew that, at some point, she had to have discussed it with Alfred. No one redecorated the Manor without having discussed it with Alfred. But he never caught her at it.
And then the orchids started appearing.
First it was the three in their bedroom, and suddenly his insomnia, a recurrent torment, was gone. Then it was the neostylis lou sneary in the small dining room. And two phalaenopsis bellina in the den.
And the very small cattleya walkeriana in the kitchen.
That one he side-eyed because it definitely could never have made it there (and stayed) without Alfred's approval.
Still, she was happy, the house smelled nice and Alfred was baking more – which meant everyone had to work on their training more but that wasn't a bad thing. So, what was the harm?
It wasn't until an aerenthes grandalena appeared on his own desk one morning that Bruce drew the line.
There wasn't any point in saying anything to Selina. This was clearly her way of marking her territory. There wasn't any more of a point in saying something to Alfred. As soon as Selina moved in, the older man took to actually humming under his breath when he cleaned (Bruce thought he recognized the snippets of the tune from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty).
But an orchid in his office was just a step too far – no matter how pleasant the jasmine-like scent was. He gave it a shot, all of five minutes, as he tried to go over the quarterly report from Lucius, and found himself thinking about their brunch plans for that Sunday instead, his shoulders loose as he leaned back against his seat.
So he had picked up the burnished copper pot, narrowed his eyes at it as if it could quiver back in fear like the denizens of Gotham After Dark (an expression that was unfortunately witnessed by a clearly unimpressed Mercy who flicked her tail and paraded out of the room), and then relocated it into Dick's room. Dick hadn't lived at home for a couple of years now but he stayed over frequently enough. He thought it might be a nice gesture.
However, Selina did not agree. Well not mostly.
The next day, a maxilleria tenuifolia appeared in Dick's room, exuding a coconut pie aroma, and the aerenthes grandalena was back on his desk.
Bruce frowned. Neither the orchid nor Mercy, who was obviously taking a perverse delight in the whole thing, seemed at all bothered. Mercy wound around his ankles and then hopped onto the bookcase to his left, curling up next to a biography of Teddy Roosevelt.
He didn't even try this time. He rehomed the orchid into Tim's room.
That did not satisfy Selina either.
Tim got a blooming oncidium sharry baby to his eternal delight because it smelled like chocolate.
And Bruce... Bruce found the aerenthes grandalena set on top of his stock printouts as if it belonged there.
He thought about trying Cassie's room but, if, there was anything that Batman understood, it was that, if a tactic wasn't working, then continuing to utilize it was not only madness but a waste of time and energy. So, instead, he took the direct route and left it decorating Selina's keyboard.
The result was orchids in all of the kids' rooms (the spicy vanilla of an oncidium twinkle fragrance fantasy in Jason's room, the lemony aroma of a cymbidium golden elf in Cassie's room, and a phalaenopsis violacea that Stephanie likened to snickerdoodles), presumably a miltoneopsis santanaei in Alfred's room (the man had a subtle hint of roses about him), and the bedamned aerenthes grandalena sitting in his ergonomic desk chair, Mercy sprawled right next to it.
Bruce had very carefully set Mercy down on the floor, getting a disgruntled hiss for his troubles, and hefted the pot, near bouncing it in his hand. Then he snuck it into the garden.
That had been yesterday.
And now there was a brassavola nodosa, a different Lady of the Night than in their bedroom, displayed where a work related specimen should be and the aerenthes grandalena was probably back in his office.
As bad as it was having an orchid in his office above ground, an orchid in his below ground office was several shades beyond the pale.
That impossible, improbable woman.
He bent down and picked up the flower pot. He hadn't gotten changed yet and there were hours of darkness left still. And he hadn't checked in with Oracle. No reason he couldn't do so in person.
He cast a quick, suspicious look around the cave, checking to see if Mercy had somehow wound her way down, and then got back into the Batmobile, buckling the flowers in the passenger seat.
Upstairs, in her office, Selina shut off the video feed to the cave and laughed, absently rubbing under Mercy's chin.