"That was fun," Adriana said to Bruce and kissed him. "And surprising."
"Hopefully in a good way," Bruce told her as they rested in bed.
"Well I admit I wasn't expecting you to come home with so much...passion," she smiled. "Especially after what I told you yesterday. And they you were gone all day and you didn't pick up with I was calling you."
Bruce touched Adriana's cheek quietly.
"It was none of my business," Bruce told her.
"I guess now you wished you wouldn't have asked," Adriana said.
Bruce thought about what he had done. Taking Twyla's potion's, the invasion of privacy, the things he couldn't unsee. None of it had made him feel any better. If anything, he now felt that he was the bad guy. The liar. He hated it.
"None of it matters now," Bruce said. "I love you. All of that...what happened..it is plenty far in the past. I just don't know what came over me. I'm sorry."
"Bruce I know...he wasn't a good person," Adriana said. "And I don't know what came over me at the time..."
Bruce felt horrible guilt, since she was opening up to him and he had already betrayed her trust by using Twyla's potion as a result of his impatience.
"You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," Bruce told her.
"I want to," she said before speaking more.
"Okay," he told her.
"We didn't like each other," Adriana said. "Not at first...I hated him and he always seemed annoyed with me. Probably because I messed things up..I was sabotaging his operations, even though he didn't know that. He started to see me as bad luck."
"I see.." Bruce said.
"Anyways...I know I told you about the night at the masquerade ball.." Adriana said and rubbed her forehead. "What I didn't tell you was that we were both under the influence of a potion of sorts. I didn't know what it was and we both drank it and...long story short...I know this is going to sound crazy, but we needed to be intimate. We didn't have a choice."
Bruce didn't know if he should fake surprise. He was gradually hating himself more and more. If he would have only waited she would have told him what he saw, and the visual of it wouldn't be burned into his memory forever.
"Okay," Bruce said plainly, hoping his shame was not showing.
"Okay?" Adriana said. "That's it? You believe me?"
"Yes," he said. "I do."
"Oh..." Adriana said and reached for his hand. "Well...anyways.."
Adriana squeezed his hand and looked into his eyes.
"I fell for him.." Adriana said.
"Fell in love," Bruce said, although he already knew.
"Yes," she told him. "It wasn't immediate...I mean for a long time I thought it was just physical. But that changed. And I can't regret it...because if none of it would have happened, I wouldn't have Arsenio."
Adriana looked into Bruce's deep brown eyes. He nodded.
"I'm glad you're taking this so well.." Adriana said, still sounding surprised.
"I'm glad you weren't hurt," Bruce told her.
"I wasn't," Adriana said. "Truthfully...he treated me reasonably well considering. I mean it ended badly after I let the governor's granddaughter go..but before that.."
The look in Adriana's eye wasn't something Bruce was sure he liked. It was sentiment. She was fond of him.
"I mean before I knew I was pregnant I was having crazy cravings," Adriana laughed. "He brought me everything I asked him to. When I think back on it, I suspect he knew I was pregnant before I did. He tolerated my mood swings pretty well."
At that moment, Bruce was happy he didn't take the second dose of Twyla's potion. He had a feeling that watching the Joker behave in such a way would be even more unnerving than what he has seen. The Joker taking care of anything would be like watching a dog walk on it's hind legs.
"Sorry..." Adriana apologized when Bruce didn't say anything back. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"
"No," he replied and touched her cheek again. "Like I said. I'm relieved you were not hurt."
"Oh..." Adriana said. "So...does that mean, you don't want to kill him anymore?"
"Adriana," Bruce laughed. "I've always wanted to kill him and I always will. I've never done it because..I can't. I'm not a murderer. Sure, there have been casualties of my vigilantism, Dent included."
"I know but what I'm asking is.." Adriana asked. "If he was here now, what would you do?"
"I would protect you and Arsenio," Bruce answered.
"He wouldn't hurt us, Bruce," Adriana replied. "I'm sure of it."
"Fortunately," Bruce said and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer. "That's not a chance we'll ever have to take. He is gone."
"Mhm..." Adriana said.
"And although Lucius refuses to tell me where he's moved him, I know that I can trust Lucius," Bruce said. "He's secure. He won't hurt anyone ever again. Wherever he is, is probably like an amusement park compared to what the criminal justice system of Gotham would have had in store."
"That's true.." Adriana said.
"Sounds like you have something on your mind," Bruce said.
"Oh...I was just thinking of Sidi," Adriana told him.
"Sidi?" Bruce asked.
"Yeah..something she told me a long time ago," Adriana said. "I don't know why I started thinking of it just now.."
"What did she tell you?" Bruce asked her.
"She said.." Adriana tried to remember. "I have to be careful who I give myself to. And then she started describing things that were pretty accurate about most of my previous relationships."
"Such as...?"
"Well I was thinking about an amusement park because you just said that," Adriana laughed. "I went to an amusement park my first year of collage before I dropped out. I went with my second boyfriend."
"Oh, "Bruce laughed.
"It was kind of terrible," Adriana went on. "My first boyfriend actually started stalking me..he followed us there and got on every ride we did. It was insane..And then when I broke up with the second one ...that one stalked me as well. I moved to Texas. It was bad.. I never really put the pieces together until Sidi told me why. It just kept getting worse and worse, the more relationships I got into."
Bruce thought about what he had done, Using Twyla's potion to see into Adriana's past. When Sidi told him that Arsenio was the product of love, he felt a madness within himself. He needed to know, without any true reason why, what happened.
"She said it was because of my gift...or curse...whatever way you want to look at it," Adriana shrugged.
"I see.." Bruce murmured.
"On the bright side," Adriana smiled. "I got to see a lot of the country, fleeing from crazy exes."
"It's a good thing the clown is locked up then," Bruce said seriously. "Who knows what would have happened-"
"No, he's not like that-" Adriana said before thinking.
"You don't know that. You haven't seen him since the day you had to free the governor's granddaughter," Bruce said. "There's no way to know the mental state he's in. He'd likely be worse than all your other exes combined."
Adriana looked at him quietly, saying nothing. She moved closer and gave him a kiss.
"Are you.." Adriana began to ask, surprised. She pulled the sheet back and looked down at Bruce's erection. "Wow..again?"
"Yes..don't know what's gotten into me," Bruce lied. Twyla's potion still hadn't worn off, even after several rounds.
"Wow." Adriana said again.
"You're probably tired," Bruce said, a hint of hope in his voice.
"I'm..." Adriana said smiling, still looking down under the sheet. "I'm down."
"Ah," Bruce exhaled in relief before pulling himself over her and kissing her again. "I promise to be quick."
Adriana held onto his shoulders and began to laugh.
"Take your time," she told him.
"How did I get so lucky," Bruce said and entered her.
"I wonder the same," Adriana said and reached up to kiss him.
Bruce leaned down to kiss her and felt her pelvis begin to rock against his. He fought it with every bit of mental control he had, but he saw it again. Her with the Joker on a bathroom floor. He felt Adriana wrap and arm around his shoulders and felt her other hand on his lower back. His body felt frozen in place, but she moved enough for the both of them. He felt his lips freeze, unable to kiss. His body tensed up.
"Hey..." Adriana said softly and stopped moving. She touched his cheek softly. "Maybe I should get on top."
Bruce looked into her eyes. He saw the rest. Her in the bed with the Joker. Her history. He told himself it was just that: history. But now that his mind was clearer and Twyla's potion was ever so slowly fading, he had a question in his mind. One that filled him with unnecessary dread, because it didn't matter. Had she enjoyed the Joker more?
"Bruce?" Adriana asked.
He moved his face a bit closer to hers, still unable to kiss. At the moment, he was hating Twyla. He felt that she had ruined his life. His arms shook with anger as he though about it. He felt himself falling forward, and to avoid putting to much weight on Adriana he pressed one hand against the wall beside the headboard.
In a flash, he could see daylight. Twyla's other potion also hadn't worn off. Twyla told him that the potion would not differentiate between lovers. It would show anyone. Bruce turned his head to the right and saw them. Adriana and himself. He was laying on his back with his head on the pillows, and he could see her hair spilling over his hips. Her lips were wrapped around him. He remembered this blissful morning, three days ago.
Bruce pulled his hand back from the wall.
"Bruce? Earth to Bruce?" Adriana asked and began to pinch his face with both hands.
"Sorry," Bruce apologized.
"Maybe you're too sleepy," Adriana said.
"No.." he said. He wasn't sleepy. He wanted the potions to wear off.
Again, the dreaded question came up again in his mind.
"So..." Adriana shrugged. "What's wrong then?"
"Nothing," he said and looked at his hand.
He didn't know what he was doing, but he felt it happening again. He knew what Sidi had described to Adriana was true. He felt jealousy, anger, fear of loss. Insane possessiveness. He pulled himself out of her.
"Aw.." Adriana said and touched his cheek, a slight disappointment in her voice.
He placed a hand on her stomach and let his fingertips glide downward.
"Oh..." she said and smiled and began to kiss him again.
Bruce closed his eyes and allowed two of his fingers to glide into her. His eyes were closed, he was afraid to open them. When he finally did open them, the experience was bizarre enough to make him think he had died. He looked around..he was in another room. He looked down, Adriana was underneath him, but her hair was different. Longer and in it's original deep blonde color. He looked down at his body...it was not his body. He could see a smudge of red paint on the forearm. He watched everything as it happened.
"Look..." he heard Adriana say. Her voice wasn't matching the visual. He pulled his fingers back out of her body.
He blinked a few times and looked around at his bedroom.
"I don't mean to criticize," Adriana said. "But if you're going to leave your fingers in there that long, maybe move them around or something next time-"
Bruce grabbed her under the chin, the inside of his palm against her throat.
"Fine," she smiled, taunting him. "Do what you want, but just so you know it's kind of boring-"
"Shh," he ordered.
She pressed her lips together and shook her head, trying not to laugh. "You're acting so weird."
Bruce kissed her chest and stomach and felt it rising and falling with her laughter. A lighthearted laugh, as she was assuming he was just exhausted. As his face moved in between her thighs he though about what he would try. He had his own ways. He had skills, he had technique.. a standard way of doing things. He looked into Adriana's eyes as he approached oral sex as he knew how. She smiled at him and ran her fingers though his hair, intermittently closing her eyes to savor the sensation.
Breaking free of his usual approach was not easy, but he went for it. He tried to mimic what he had witnessed. What he had seen was what he perceived as as a more messy tactic. The movements of the lips and tongue were sloppy, wet, and chaotic. The movements seemed intuitive, unplanned, completely indiscriminate yet somehow well directed and careful.
Bruce felt Adriana gripping his hair and pulling him back to stop him.
"What..." she said shakily as if catching her breath. "What is that?"
"That's my mouth," he said plainly.
"I know but.." she said sounding mildly disoriented and lost for words. He had never heard her sound like this.
"I'll stop," he said.
"No," she said quickly. "It's nice.."
He continued on, hearing her climax several times before stopping. Without pause he pulled himself over her and began to kiss her neck. He stopped to look into her eyes before entering her. She looked relaxed but almost half asleep. He went into her progressively which required tremendous retraint because she had become extremely slippery.
Bruce followed through exactly as he had seen, the mechanisms that he would never have though to try otherwise. He stretched her open in all directions, grabbing onto the edge of the mattress to stabilize himself as he pressed in at different angles. He heard her moaning and thrashing underneath of him and kept going. It required monumental control and attention to watch the cues from her body. As she began to calm, he went on with what he had seen next. He turned his body towards her left so that when he looked straight down he saw forearm and hip.
He pressed around with a slight twisting motion within her and then he heard her, speaking as if she was starting several sentences but each one broke before she could finish the thought. The spot that he never knew was there, that he was pressing into, made her react this way. It was located off to the side, and would have taken patience, exploration and attentiveness to find. Bruce knew he had all of these characteristics, and tried not to think about the fact that he did not discover it on his own. He grabbed the edge of the mattress again, leaning into the spot with more pressure and then he felt her thrashing again.
In a swift movement, her entire body twisted over and her left arm involuntarily flew up and hit him hard across the face. As his face went downwards he saw a short burst of fluid erupt from her and spray onto his pelvis. He was sure if he would have blinked he would have missed it.
She grabbed his face weakly as her arms shook.
"Oh Bruce!" she said while trembling, finally nearly coherent. "I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"
"I think you broke my nose," he said.
"Are you serious? Oh my g-" she said and tried to sit.
"I'm joking, sweetheart," he said, wondering why his voice sounded so defeated.
"Oh.. " Adriana said. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to it's just...well you were...really...that was amazing-"
"I'm fine," he said as she fell back lethargically onto the sheets.
Adriana looked up at him with a spacey look in her eyes.
"So..you enjoyed it?" he asked, even though it was obvious.
She began to laugh hysterically as the question seemed silly to her since the answer was so obvious.
"That's a yes?" he said and rested a hand on her thigh.
"Sweetie," Adriana said smiling, and took his hand. "That was the best thing you ever did. Wow...I can already tell I'm going to have a great day tomorrow...well today..since it's four in the morning."
"The best.." Bruce said, mostly to himself.
"Come here," Adriana said drowsily, pulling him into spooning position behind her.
As soon as he was there, she was asleep. She had fallen asleep in a split second. Bruce held her, and somehow felt unclean. And to make it worse, he felt inadequate. He mimicked what saw, and her reaction was the most potent he had even witnessed with her. Yet it still didn't compare to what he saw with the Joker. He needed to forget...would Sidi or Twyla be able to help him? All he needed was to forget what had seen with the Joker and Adriana. He needed to erase the jealousy and possessiveness. That also meant he would never have a night like this with his wife again. He would forget what he had done, what he had learned about her and how he had learned it. If in fact it was even possible to wipe his memory away. He hated it all.
He looked down at Adriana, knowing that even though throughout their relationship he had gone though more stress, guilt and trouble than he ever had before...he needed her and she was worth it.