Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His grip on the steering wheel has his knuckles pale.

You were in the passenger seat of the batmobile; your head lolled forward as you slept. He wants to tilt your head back up and lean it against the window but there was no time.

No one could know of the civilian in his car.

He races through the streets and stops at your apartment complex.

A quick look around revealed no one in the immediate vicinity. He might’ve worried but even Oracle was quiet tonight. He hopes he’s doing enough to ensure your safety as he helps you out of the car.

You’d been drinking out with your colleagues. It was a celebration for a case that had been bothering your department for a while now. Drunk and delirious, you’d notified him of where you were and slurred through conversation.

He’d been worried; thought you’d been drugged. But you hadn’t.

He holds you by his side as he leads you up to your apartment.

Oracle fucks with the security cameras recording Batman escorting a drunk detective to their apartment. The locks on your door are undone within a minute and then he’s stepping into your apartment.

Recognising home, you half-rouse and stumble your way into your room and slam the door shut. Bruce, on the other hand, is struck still. He’s struck still at just how ‘you’ your apartment is.

He’s standing in the midst of your shoes piled up by the door and he adds his boots to the pile.

“Ensure our safety, Oracle” he says. She rolls her eyes even as she mutters an affirmative. They both know he was being redundant but they both also know that it was better to be safe than sorry.

He walks in and explores your apartment.

He runs a hand over your worn-in sofa.

Notices the little knick-knacks on your shelves.

Notices the pictures on the walls.

Notices the half read poetry book on the dining table.

Notices that your kitchen was spotless.

Takes in the distinct scent of your home.

And then, he’s informed of the urgent need to leave.

He leaves.

That night, alone in his room; alone in his oversized bed, his imagination runs wild as it usually does.

But when he dreams, he dreams of you.

In his dreams, he holds you close just as he had; close enough to smell the alcohol on your breath and he takes you home but instead of walking away, you drag him in with you and then you kiss him.

What surprises him on waking up isn’t the dreamt kiss, but the easy way he’d responded; as if he’d done it a thousand times before.

As if he’d kissed you before.

He’d certainly thought of it.

And now it was bleeding into his dreams.

What a mess!

He sits in front of the giant batcomputer, glaring at it as he ponders over what-ifs.

He’d driven as quickly as he could to the bar you were at and finding you had been no trouble. You’d been walking out yourself.

Drunk, delirious and stumbling over yourself, you’d caught onto his arm the moment you’d seen him and he was sure that it was something you’d done as a friend.

So he’d held you as close as he could and taken you home.

It had been a whole 14 hours since he’d taken you home and he could still remember your steady weight pressed against him.

He could almost breathe in the alcohol on your breath.

He whispered a swear word and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Chapter Text

Sitting in front of the batcomputer, he contemplates hacking into your devices.

There were roughly 9 hours to meeting you and Oracle hadn’t been in touch. That could only mean that you were safe…unless you weren’t.

His what-if’s and rumination stops when he gets a call from Superman for a meeting with the Justice League.

As he expected of the world- crime never stopped.

He spends his busy and spare time thinking of you. There were a few hours separating the two of you but that didn’t stop him from wanting.

He wanted.

He wanted to see you smile.

He wanted to discuss cases with you.

He wanted you to tell him about your fresh manicure.

He wanted to watch you work.

He wanted to stand by your weak side.

He wanted and he wanted and he wanted.

There was no end to wanting when it came to you.

He was a pool of desire when it came to you.

And you.

You didn’t help at all.

The easy way you led him into your office.

The ready way with which you took his opinions.

The way your eyes gleamed when the two of you struck a plan.

Your determination.

Your efficiency.

It was all a drug to him.

He enjoyed working with you and it frightened him. Bruce Wayne was terrified even as Batman kept his stony expression.

He’s been over this multiple times but his mind loops once more. Loops to the same old argument he’s been having with himself since he found himself in love.

Because Bruce Wayne knows this as surely as he knows his own name - to love is to lose.

To love is to be terrified.

He can already picture the arguments.

He can picture the hate on your face.

He can picture you in a pool of blood.

He can picture you crying.

He can picture you leaving.

Each scenario he envisions is a stab to the heart.

So, he cancels his evening plans of working with you and lays in his lonely bed; curled into a pillow with blankets pooling around him.

He wonders what you’d think of his pathetic state and he knows you’d take it in stride.

He wasn’t stupid enough to project his insecurities onto you and he had good enough observation skills to know that on the outside, he seemed put together; he seemed impenetrable.

But what of the shattered child inside?

No one knew.

And no one could know.

When he falls asleep , he dreams of you and when he wakes up, he holds his pillow closer.

Because while his unconscious mind didn’t, his waking mind did know. It knew better; much, much better than his dreams.

He couldn’t love.

He couldn’t stand proudly by your side as he hoped to.

He wasn’t whole.

He was a man who suffocated others.

He was the man who got to places in the nick of time.

He was the man who’d faced everything in his life with grit and nothing more.

He knew better than to act on his feelings because there was no variation of the universe where he made you happy.

No variation where he stood by you without guilt.

No possibility where he felt whole.

Bruce Wayne couldn’t love.

Bruce Wayne couldn’t love because he knew this as surely as he knew his own name- Bruce Wayne’s love was a worthless offering.

Chapter Text

The two of you stood on a rooftop in Gotham. You were alone except for the very realistic Gargoyles - who might just be alive.

You never did know what would knock you on your back in Gotham.

You lit your cigarette as the two of you stared at the skyline. For once, it wasn’t raining.

Silence was common between the two of you. You’d tried making conversation at first, when you hadn’t known him well. He - in particular him fashion - hadn’t responded and after three tries, you’d stopped trying.

He liked the silence and you did too.

It was peaceful.

And then you decide to break the silence.

“I like you, you know”

He grunts or mutters something as he did something to one of his many high-tech, self-invented gadgets, of which you’d stopped keeping track ages ago.

“As other than a friend”

He stills for only a moment before he says what is to break your heart, but you beat him to it.

“You don’t have to respond. Or reciprocate. Just thought, you should know” If you didn’t already, you finish in your head.

What was he to say to that?

Thank you?

He nods and the two of you return to your peaceful silence.

In about 5 minutes, your break would be over and the two of you would return to the case but for those 5 minutes, you wonder what it’d be like - to stand by his side as something other than a coworker.

What would it be like to stand by his side as his lover?

Would he be as stoic or would he be more romantic?

You didn’t know the man behind the mask and as things stood now, you had no chance of knowing either.

You hope, someday - soon enough - to be content with that.

But even as pain and anger course through you, you stand still and go through your cigarette at your own pace.

Bruce, on the other hand, had to willfully look away. He had to restrain himself from staring at you and it was proving to be difficult.

What were you thinking? What expression were you wearing? What would you do next?

Did you hope to move on? Or would you pine? Would you wait for him? Would you tell him?

He didn’t know and he didn’t like that he didn’t know.

He had far too many blindspots when it came to you and not for a lack of observation. It was all for a lack of faith in his own judgement and deduction.

He’d fucked up a few times in his life and he’d paid dearly. He didn’t want that to be the case with you too.

Some days, he could swear that Gotham was a living, breathing thing; was something with a pulse and a heartbeat. Some days, he could swear he was being cradled and on other days he could find nothing but hatred for the city.

Because Gotham had large, warm palms and the more that he thought of it, the more he realised how fondly she cradled her citizens.

But the more he thought, the more he worried and the more he worried, the smaller you grew.

You were a hummingbird in Gotham’s palms and that was something neither Bruce Wayne, nor Batman could protect you from. Neither could protect you because neither could tell when and why Gotham’s palms would turn cruel. Couldn’t tell when the palms cradling the hummingbird would become the same hands to crush it.

And he was scared.

As you stood by him, smoking, he hoped he betrayed no expression, nor emotion. It could only mean trouble.

Chapter Text

It was a slap across his face - the realisation that you disliked Bruce Wayne - no, the realisation that you didn’t even know him.

He’d spent so, so, so long imagining himself with you that the lines had started to blur. He wanted to slap himself out of it but that would be far too erratic.

Batman and your team were working on a new case, stalking a millionaire who they believed had a tip to a larger problem - which meant everybody shared comms.

Someone - he doesn’t know who - made a snarky comment about how Gotham was going to be devoured from the inside out if people didn’t start caring about the inequalities between people and you quipped back and he agreed with your quip.

He’d seen the underbelly of Gotham and it’s criminals but he’d also seen the rich and the socialites. He’d seen the lines and accountability and differences blur.

He agreed with you when you said that the rich needed to be less nonchalant about their actions and destructive habits. But the realisation that you counted him among the many irresponsible, hedonistic, pathetic fucks left him feeling oddly lonely.

It struck him again - just how much of his life was coloured in greys. How the only people who knew him inside and out were Alfred and maybe Barbara.

He hadn’t realised how you’d slowly started to dilute the greys until now; until you’d made that quip.

And it left him hollow and lonely - the fact that he’d been right.

The fact that he couldn’t be with you.

The fact that he couldn’t take off his mask.

But mostly, it was the fact that you’d turn your back to him when you’d see him without the mask.

Here and now; in fights and office hours, when you turned your back to him, you did it as a sign of trust; as a sign that you relied on him.

When you’d turn your back to Bruce Wayne, you’d do it to walk away.

You’d expose your spine to him and it would no longer mean trust and acceptance.

It would mean rejection.

His head spun at the thought.

He couldn’t stand the thought.

How could you?

But why wouldn’t you?

Why would you want him? Why would you want the elusive, scarred bachelor Bruce Wayne?

He couldn’t even text you back on time, let alone be with you, let alone let you in.

It was elusive; his relationship with you was a wisp of smoke that he was trying to make permanent. It was a dream he was trying his hardest to grasp at.

But it wouldn’t be grasped; it wouldn’t be kept.

The sooner he accepted that, the better it would be.

“Focus” he orders himself and is immediately met with everyone shutting up on the comms.

“Back to work” he adds, making it seem as though he were talking to them and not himself.

On the other side of the comms, you smirked. You loved the man’s work ethic.

Soon enough, the elusive millionaire would step out of the club and a few of you would tail him.

Soon enough, you’d see your masked obsession again. The thought has you thrilled and fuzzy.

You couldn’t wait.

Chapter Text

Your eyes shine with pride in your dimly lit office and your grin is wolfish.

The chase and capturing of the millionaire had gone just fine and now, the two of you were in your office with the important documents, files, clues.

He watched you with his standard stony expression and wondered how you could look so breathtaking in such terrible lighting?

He could tell you were itching for a smoke with the way your fingers were grasping and ungrasping the air.

“Only you could get out of such a high stakes chase with only a few scratches” you say and he can hear the pride in your voice.

This was all going too far.

You pull open a drawer for your engraved lighter before looking up at him. “Do you mind? I need a smoke”

“I do, actually”

Something in your face dims and you shut the drawer.

“We’re gonna fight” you ask and if he’d been any other man, he’d have flinched.

Instead, he stands up to his full height and walks to the other end of the desk; he walks over to you.

“I need to warn you. Do not get close to me”

He sees the twitches around your eyes. Notices your instinct to flinch.

And then you breath deep and stand up straighter- you were getting ready to say something important.

“I’m not scared of you. And I can take care of myself, Bat”

It had been a joke you’d once made - said he was a ‘Batty Bat’. The alliteration had made you laugh and laugh and laugh. As though he’d put a serum in your veins to make you giggle, which, if he were a ‘Batty Bat’, he would’ve done, he’d admitted to himself.

But now you were here, using it in anger. You were using his nickname to insult him.

It was all going as he’d imagined in his worst case scenarios.

What did it matter what he wanted, when Gotham was taking his hummingbird back?

A stab of anger goes through him.

Why him?! Why you?! Why the distance?!

Why these circumstances?!

“You’d best know your place” At that, you flinch and he wishes he could take it all back.

Your eyes reflect the hurt you're feeling and seeing himself mirrored in them only strengthens his resolve and his disgust for himself.

He was no more than a shadow.

You should be with someone who was something more.

“I will not be coming back. Next time, call for someone else.”

You say nothing else, though, you want to. He sees the impulse in the way your jaw sets, in the way your chin raises just slightly.

If you’d been another kind of woman, you might’ve scratched him or slapped him.

Selina would’ve.

Hell, he’d have done it.

He knew he deserved it.

But you didn’t.

You stayed professional, just as you’d been the whole time.

You were selfless, unflinching, and sacrificial of your curiosity even now.

And he loved you for it.

He steps back and then he walks out.

Half an hour later, he stands on a rooftop and finds himself reminiscing and ruminating over your confession.

It was misting and he was bleeding.

It was true that he’d gotten out with only with scrapes and shallow cuts but one of them had started bleeding out in droplets.

If only.

If only, he could take it all back - not just his words, but all your shared experiences too.

If only, he could’ve gone back and warned himself.

What would it take?

Blood?

He had plenty of that.

If only it could turn back time.

If only he could do something to undo it all.

If only, he could suffer in a way that’d end your suffering.

And his.

But he couldn’t.

The mist turns to a drizzle.

He stays on the rooftop for an hour or so before going back to patrolling.

The world and crime stopped for no one.

And neither could Batman.