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lingerasthesmokeoncedid · 5 months

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What Do the Lonely Do At Christmas?

A Battinson Holiday Fic

After years of not celebrating holidays, Bruce Wayne is trying to do something different. But when he hires a professional decorator to deck the halls of Wayne Manor, Bruce finds that it's not just his home and holiday that will be different - his heart just might change, too.

I. They’re Singing “Deck the Halls,” but it’s not like Christmas at All

On days when he went into the downtown highrise office that bore his name, Bruce Wayne didn’t take the executive elevator. Ever since the beginning of his New Gotham project, he tried to connect with the people on a human level. To not be their boss, but someone they could talk to, who could hear their grievances and worries, who could do something in his considerable power to help them, even without his mask.

Funny thing about that, though. As it turned out, no one wanted to ride the elevator with The Boss.

He would approach the elevator bank and people would scatter. A few would smile and wave uncomfortably when their eyes met, but none of them would brave even a few minutes with Bruce Wayne, the scion of the richest family in the city.

So, he rode the elevator alone. Always.

At least…until one day in December, when the wind was biting and the snow tasted like change.

“Hold the door, please!”

For a half-second, Bruce didn’t even realize the disembodied voice was addressing him. No one ever rode with him; now someone was calling after him, begging not to be left behind?

“Hold the door – thanks!”

But then she appeared. An unremarkable stranger, running for the doorway like her life depended on it, shuffling past her frozen colleagues as she jugged several ill-stacked boxes. Bruce didn’t recognize her, but all the same, he couldn’t help but stare.

Framed by the brass elevator frame and backlit by the strings of gold and silver lights on the lobby wall behind her, she beamed at him, beatific as an angel atop a tree.

Bruce awkwardly shuffled to the side as he held the doors open to allow her inside. Not enough, apparently, because as she jostled to manage her tower of packages, she pressed her back against his until she was safely inside and could maneuver better.

It was an accident, he told himself. And it only lasted a moment. Less than a moment. But he’d caught a breath of her scent, felt the shift of her body against his…and it now felt burned into his skin.

“Thanks again for that. Sorry I kept you waiting.”

He pressed the button for the top floor, his stop, and was surprised when she informed him she was going to the same place.

They rode in silence for awhile, Bruce in the corner of the elevator, shifting his weight across the balls of his feet, trying not to look at her slightly fuzzy reflection in the elevator mirror. She hummed along easily to the holiday elevator music playing above them, still carefully balancing her boxes.

It was like riding with someone who didn’t know he was Bruce Wayne - or someone who didn’t care. Either way, he decided to break their silence.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” He asked, in that slightly stilted way of his. After so long in the shadows, it took time to adjust to normal human interaction.

“Just a temp,” she chirped. Then, she gestured to the boxes, which, upon further inspection, contained red ribbons and garland. “I’m a professional decorator. I’ve been doing the building here.”

“Oh, so you’re responsible for all of this?” Bruce asked. This time, it was his turn to gesture - to the tinsel hanging from the ceiling above them.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she replied.

“No, no,” he said. Shit. He really was out of practice. He’d barely said a few sentences to this woman, and already he’d accidentally insulted her. “Your work is great. It’s just that all of this holiday cheer, it’s just not me.”

He expected the conversation to end there. He’d embarrassed himself, he’d screwed up already - no wonder no one wanted to ride the elevator with him, and her floor was fast approaching. But she surprised him.

“Really?” She asked.

It was obvious, wasn’t it? Bruce Wayne, tabloid badboy recluse with greasy hair and too-big clothes and too much money? Of course he didn’t immediately strike anyone as a Buddy the Elf type. But she seemed genuinely surprised, as if she saw something besides darkness when she looked at him.

Strange. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had seen the good in Bruce Wayne. Batman, yes. Bruce Wayne? No. It had been a long, long road since then.

“Now you say it like it’s a bad thing,” he lobbed back.

“It’s just…you just don’t really seem like a Grinch. Not even an Ebenezer Scrooge.”

Last year, he’d spent Christmas covered in someone else’s blood, standing over some nameless, faceless criminal who’d had the misfortune to try to rob someone at gunpoint near Batman. This year…he liked the idea of spending it at home. Giving out presents to kids in The Narrows. Doling out Christmas bonuses. Stuff like that.

Sure, he’d probably Batman on Christmas Eve. And probably Boxing Day, too. But for one night, maybe he could help people as a man instead.

“Call me a recovering Grinch. I just haven’t celebrated any holiday in a long time.”

She looked like she wanted to ask him why. He appreciated it more than he could say that she didn’t.

The doors opened on her floor then, and she smiled at Bruce before she left him.

“Well. Maybe you should try something different this year.”

II. It’s Beginning to Look a lot LIke Christmas

A few days later, Bruce Wayne was in the attic of the Manor, hauling things around like a man possessed, searching for something he hadn’t seen in many, many years.

But then, a crackle on his watch, and suddenly, Alfred’s voice filled the musty attic room.

“Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’ve just been buzzed on the gate intercom. I have eyes on a woman, and she claims to have been invited by you–”

Bruce could picture it. The butler at the bank of security cameras monitoring Wayne Manor at all times, suspiciously eyeing some strange car approaching.

His chest tightened. She was here. She was going to be here, in his house. A woman in Wayne Manor. Since his parents’ death, that was even less common than holiday celebrations.

Bruce checked the time. Damn. He hadn’t meant to be up here when she arrived. But finding the boxes took more time than expected, and –

There. There was the box he was looking for. Caked under a thick layer of dust, a box marked “CHRISTMAS/HANUKKAH” sat in the corner of the room.

He spoke into his watch, then reached for it. “I’ll take care of it, Alfred.”

A skeptical pause from the other end of the line.

“...Very good sir.”

But Bruce’s understanding of very good, sir in that context must have been quite different from Alfred’s, because when he found his way to the atrium some ten minutes later, his attention was drawn away from the front door, where he expected her to be waiting, to the nearby sitting room.

Despite the grand doors being shut, Bruce could still hear Alfred’s cool, modulated tones and a soft, female laugh. The clinking of fine porcelain. Soft Christmas music from a record player.

Bruce’s shoes squeaked on the marble by accident. In the sitting room, Alfred excused himself and materialized in the hallway with Bruce a moment later.

“You let her in?” Bruce asked, hating how he sounded like a petulant child, but not enough to let go of his frustration. He hadn’t wanted to explain all of this to Alfred. He’d hoped she would be able to decorate today, then leave before Alfred was any the wiser. He should have known the old man would find his way to interfere.

“I couldn’t very well leave her out in the cold, could I?” Alfred said, his smug tone telling Bruce everything he needed to know. I wanted to snoop and I wasn’t going to let this girl go without getting to know her. “She’d have frozen if I hadn’t gotten her a cup of tea and brought her in, that’s how long it took you.”

Bruce grit his teeth. Yeah, this was mostly his fault. Not that he was going to admit that. “I was busy.”

“Busy with what? And what’s that?” he asked, gesturing to the box Bruce carried. “Old junk for the cave? Sir, when you have a date come over –”

“We’re not dating,” Bruce said, quickly.

“Apologies, I’m sure you’re keeping it casual, right?”

Dammit. He was going to have to explain now. Couldn’t have Alfred hearing wedding bells – the old man was convinced that was the only way Bruce would ever fully give up being Batman. If some woman came into his life and he hung up his mantle for her. “She’s here to decorate the manor. The boxes are our old Christmas and Hanukkah stuff.”

Alfred blinked. Finally on the back foot. Finally surprised by something.

“She…what?”

“It’s the holidays, Alfred,” Bruce said, as if he hadn’t been avoiding them most of his life.

A scoff from the butler. “First time you’ve noticed in ten years.”

“I’m trying something different.”

Not good enough for Alfred. Bruce took a different tack, his lips quirking up in a slight smirk.

“Come on. You should be proud. I’m finally starting to act human again.”

III. Your Eyes are Like Starlight Now

A few days later (Christmas decorating a manor of this size couldn’t be done in an afternoon, apparently), Bruce was set up in his office, trying not to think about the strange woman currently in his house. He didn’t let people into the Manor very often. It was private, a sanctuary - no, more like a creaking, heaving monument to the past. To let people in this house was to let them into a life he’d left behind. To poke around at the ghosts and peer around corners for his secrets.

So, as she worked, he was very aware of every creak and groan of the house. And he was also very aware of her humming those festive songs - the tunes echoed through the halls and to his desk as though they were meant for his ears only.

The idea of someone else in his space, someone besides Alfred, unsettled him. But, as the days went on, he realized it was the disquiet of a man learning to dance for the first time. Awkward, then oddly comforting.

Their shared conversations in the hallway as they happened to pass each other, their laughter in the kitchen as she took her lunch break while he just so happened to be there making a cup of coffee, the wave they always shared – him looking down from the window, her looking back at the mansion as she went to her car – at the end of each day….they all added up to something, something Bruce couldn’t ever quite name for himself.

Even if he knew the word for this feeling – and he suspected that he did – he didn’t want to examine it too closely. Too complicated. Too confusing. Too risky.

That afternoon, her voice carried across the house. This time, it really was meant for him.

“Mr. Wayne? Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce left his desk and followed the sound, until they met together on the sweeping second-floor landing. He blinked as he approached. In the hours since they’d parted, she’d gotten busy. Christmas lights and dangling ornaments were everywhere. Had the house ever been this bright, this cheerful, before?

“There you are, Mr. Wayne,” she said. “I was just–”

“You can call me Bruce, you know.”

He hated being called Mr. Wayne. It felt like carrying his father’s tombstone around his neck.

“That’s allowed?” She asked.

An understandable question. This house didn’t radiate casual, cool, boss energy. But he also thought, when he impulsively hired her that day after their first meeting, that she hadn’t seen him as only a boss. But as a person.

A boss, you call Mr. Wayne. A person, you call Bruce. He wanted to be Bruce. God, how badly he wanted to be Bruce for her. What a peculiar feeling. “I’d like it if you did.”

Their eyes met. When he finally pulled away, he was convinced he’d looked at her for too long, but he wouldn’t have traded a moment of it. The Christmas lights twinkling in her eyes were hypnotic.

He cleared his throat. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I’m decorating the tree,” she said, waving down towards the first floor. She’d had a tall fir delivered bright and early in a snowdrift that morning as Bruce watched her from the second story window. “I thought maybe you’d like to put up some of the more sentimental ornaments?”

Bruce remembered decorating the tree with his own parents, but that had been so long ago. He assumed professionals like herself would do everything; that’s part of the reason he hired her. So he wouldn’t have to live out those painful, happy memories of his parents again. But, still. He didn’t want to be labeled as weird. If this was the done thing, he would do it. “Is that something your clients like to do?”

“Not usually. But I always like to offer. It’s how my family and I used to get ready for Christmas.”

He wanted to ask her why she said that in the present tense; he then remembered the restraint she’d shown in the elevator.

He’d been avoiding the holidays for years because they reminded him of his parents; it seemed, at least to him, that she was holding onto them because she didn’t want to forget hers.

He’d been suffering for years. She seemed pretty happy. Maybe he could try her way. Just this once. See if it made him feel better.

“Well. I don’t usually do that,” he said. Her face fell for only a second before he picked it up just as quickly. “But I remember someone suggesting that I try things differently this year.”

Moments later, they were down in the grand atrium, where she and her team of delivery men had erected the fourteen-inch tree she’d spent the entire day decorating. The scent of fir and snow filled the air, immediately making him think of her. She’d smelled the same when they’d first met in the elevator that day, when she’d first shown him the kindness of treating him like a person instead of a name.

As he stepped deeper into the room, towards the box he’d brought down a few days ago, he examined the splendor she’d brought to this usually drab, forgotten place. Of course, the Christmas tree stood like an elaborate mountain in the corner near a big, snow-dappled window. Holly and garland had been strung, the photographs in this room had been dusted and lined amongst hand-me-down nutcrackers and tchotchkes. His mother’s Hanukkah decor and family relics had been arranged, too, given a place of prominence on a long side table running the length of the room.

It was…perfect. Like she’d borrowed a memory or a dream from the warmest, most sincere, deepest buried parts of him and brought it to staggering life.

She looked like she was made to stand near his fireplace. Like she belonged there, in his room, in the warmth of this holiday scene she’d created. He tried not to think about that when he began picking through the sentimental ornaments she’d left for him to hang.

“I haven’t looked at these in a long time,” Bruce muttered. He ran his chafed, scarred hands over some of the artifacts of Christmases past.

The woman beside him, so close they brushed when she breathed too deeply, brightened. “You’re in for such a treat. There are some great ones here. Like….” She dug around in the box and produced a scuffed, chipped ornament from almost thirty years ago. “Bryce’s first Christmas.”

Bruce chuckled. “My father gave that one to me. He’d been somewhere in Europe just before Christmas and apparently that country didn’t have have too many Bruces. This was the closest he could find. My mother said they probably had Bruce ornaments, but he brought this one home anyway. Always loved a joke, my dad.”

The words fell out before he could catch them. He stiffened when they stopped, then fully aware that he’d been soft, vulnerable, to this woman. Sensing the shift in mood, she offered:

“I’m sorry - would you want to do this alone? I don’t want to intrude - ”

Yes, please go, every fiber of his being wanted to say. But he overruled the feeling. He’d been masking himself in shadows and isolation for years; maybe if he wanted to be a different man, a different Batman, he had to once again return to the land of the living.

“You’ve still got some decorating to do, right?” He said. A small smile escaped him. Teasing people wasn’t really in his repertoire, but he gave it a try: “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your work.”

She rewarded him with a smile of her own. “Thanks.”

For awhile, they worked in silence. One by one, Bruce would take out the ornaments – paper stars he’d decorated in kindergarten, a wedding bell given to his parents on their fifth wedding anniversary, a Dick Tracy ornament given to him by Lucious Fox after watching the movie in the guy’s office every time Bruce would go to Wayne Tower after school…

Each one was a fresh papercut. A memory of someone or something he’d lost or forgotten. But at least he was feeling something besides rage. Something besides vengeance.

At least he remembered how deeply he’d loved people before. Even if he’d lost them.

Every few minutes, his focus shifted to the woman who’d accidentally brought a blizzard of change to his life. She hadn’t precipitated the change. He’d been looking for ways to make himself a better man outside of his suit ever since The Flood, and she’d just been there at the right time.

Exactly the right time. Looking exactly right. Talking to him exactly right. Making him feel exactly right, even in her small, subtle ways.

At that moment, she struggled on tiptoe to fill an ornament gap about halfway up the tree.

“Is everything okay over there?” Bruce asked.

She cursed softly under her breath, half-laughing to herself as she did. “It’s my own stupid fault. I wasn’t thinking and already brought my ladder back to the car. I’ll just have to run out and get it again.”

An instant war sparked inside Bruce. His natural instinct to help kicked in, but the darker parts of him, the ones that wanted to remain stoic and remote, kicked into defensive action. Don’t offer to help, Bruce. She has the ladder. You can carry that for her if you want to –

Bruce paid that voice inside him no heed. He’d decided that he was going to try acting like a normal person, rather than a bat vigilante who only occasionally donned a human suit and pretended to be one. This was another step in that process.

“Would you like - ” He cleared his throat and lightly flexed his hands in an awkward suggestion of lifting her up. “Could I help you with that?”

Her eyes sparked, then shrugged. “Sure. If you think you can handle it.”

Smothering a smile – if only she knew how strong he was, what damage his hands currently cupping her waist could do, how easily he threw over fully grown men three times her size, she wouldn’t have said anything – he lifted her up.

In his life of extrajudicial crime fighting, Bruce had endured many painful moments that stopped time. But he couldn’t remember any pleasant memory that managed to manipulate time for him. In his experience, torment lasted interminably; happiness was fleeting.

All that to say – holding her in his arms might only have taken a moment in reality. To him, though, the world tilted into slow motion, and it occurred to him how little kind touch he’d had. How nice it felt to touch someone else without wanting to hurt them. How perfect she felt in his arms.

When he finally returned her to the solid stability of the hardwood floor, the world snapped back into proper rhythm, but still, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She’d brought light and warmth to the manor again. She was mesmerizing.

So mesmerizing, in fact, that he hadn’t thought to release her.

A flush traveled across her collarbone, but there was a teasing note to her voice when she said, “You can let me go now.”

Bruce stepped away like she’d electrocuted him. “Oh. Right.” Then, he added, mumbling: “God, I’m a cliché.”

“You’re not. What’s a cliché at Christmas, anyway? We call that tradition.”

This time, he braved a joke. “So…it’s your tradition to spend Christmas in some guy’s arms?”

She smirked. “Only if he’s lucky.”

IV. Warm in December

On a bitterly cold December night, the Batman apprehended a series of criminals robbing an apartment building of its presents. At the scene, he lingered as the detectives and police officers investigated the aftermath.

One man, Romero, was bent over a series of spent bullet shells (the robbers had been well armed), when he looked over at the hulking figure looming nearby.

“Bats, what do you do this time of year? Hibernate?”

“Clearly not,” he said, gesturing to the fact that he was very obviously not sleeping off the winter somewhere.

Romero’s cocky bravado dripped from every word, taunting and pointed. “I mean, really. I’ve been thinking about it, and I just can’t picture you by the fire, wearing mittens and Santa hats on those ears of yours, Mrs. Batman waiting for you under the mistletoe…”

Something must have shifted in his expression - or maybe his fists had clenched - because in an instant, Gordon was in between the man and the bat.

“Cut it out, Romero.”

Romero protested, but Gordon snapped again. “Go back to GPDHQ. You’ve got paperwork.”

With one long, sharp look at Batman, Romero complied with the order, grumbling something like can’t believe I’m working Christmas Eve, should have worked Thanksgiving under his breath.

When he was gone, Gordon took over his cataloging duty. Batman again hovered.

“That wasn’t necessary.”

“No, it wasn’t. But consider that your Christmas gift. Romero’s got a smart mouth; it was time someone put him in his place.”

Batman silently nodded his thanks.

“He’s right, though,” the detective said. “Not natural for a man to be this way.”

Gordon didn’t have to explain what he meant by that. The Batman knew. It wasn’t natural for a man to be so alone.

But maybe he wouldn’t be alone this year. Maybe he would try something different.

V. Underneath the Mistletoe

Bruce didn’t sleep much that night. After stitching himself up, he usually passed out for at least an hour or two of rest before starting a new day. Instead, he found himself pacing the holly-lined hallways, taking in all the work she’d done to the manor, thinking about her and what he would do the next day when he saw her.

It was a big risk, this plan. He’d ever done anything like it before. He probably shouldn’t. What a terrible idea. But what if it wasn’t? What if it turned out alright? What if letting someone else into his life wasn’t the end of the world, but the start of a new one?

He wanted to inspire hope in Gotham now, not just fear. What if that started at home? What if he stopped being so afraid all of the time – of everything, of every one, of every feeling – and actually let hope grow where rot once had?

He didn’t know the answer to those questions. He only knew that when he finally found her the next morning, putting the finishing touches on a gingerbread display in the front hall, he spluttered:

“Do you have any plans for the holidays?”

If his sudden appearance and even more sudden question surprised her, she didn’t let it show. She was probably used to it by now, he figured. His strange behaviors, his unsocialized difficulty connecting. Where other people might have recoiled or flinched, she merely smiled as she dusted powdered sugar snow over a perfect 1/35 replica of Wayne Manor. “Black and white movies. A big glass of wine. A defrosted pumpkin pie and probably some Thai food.”

Bruce shuffled. The next question was the part he’d been dreading. He didn’t want to seem like some creepy guy fishing, but he needed to know before he asked…“Alone?”

“Yeah. Alone.” A flicker of pain crossed her face. Again, she didn’t offer, and he didn’t ask why. Her voice quiver gave her away, though. She may try to seem brave, but there was pain under the surface and excuses. “But it’s better, really. I mean, that way, I get to, you know, do what I want on Christmas. No one to tell me what to do or anything. I pick the menu, I pick the movies...My Christmas, My way.”

A twinge of melancholy echoed in those last words. Bruce might have shivered; he’d never seen her anything less than the chipper holiday angel before. But, he had a plan.

“Well. If you change your mind…” he said, as casually as he could manage. “It’s just going to be me and Alfred here this Christmas. It might be nice to have company.”

Their eyes met. She froze.

“We could have Thai food,” he offered, suddenly unsure. Shit. Had he misread this situation? Was he imagining feelings there that didn’t exist? Had he fucked up his first attempt at trying to open up to someone else?

She took a step forward. His heart jumped into his throat.

“Not exactly traditional Christmas fare, though, is it?” She asked.

Translation: You don’t have to do that for me.

He took another step forward too, braver than he felt. “We could try something different this year.”

Translation: There’s nothing I’d rather do.

They were impossibly close now, lingering beneath one of the countless arched doorways that made up this creaky old manor. For a moment, he thought she might reach up and kiss him.

Then, her eyes flickered upward. “You’d better watch out, Mr. Wayne.”

He followed her gaze. Ah. “Mistletoe.”

“I didn’t put it there,” she said, taking a step back, clearly afraid to give him the wrong impression.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “I know you didn’t.”

Because he had. He’d hung up the mistletoe last night.

All the same, he took a polite step back. He might have hung the mistletoe as an excuse to kiss her – knowing his courage would probably fail him without it – but now, he knew better. She would kiss him. And when she did, he would be ready.

VI. Although it’s been said many times, many ways…

Being at Bruce Wayne’s house, as Bruce Wayne’s guest, was a very weird experience. He was the most famous man in all of Gotham city. She was a professional decorator, barely making ends meet. Totally anonymous and random. If not for a chance elevator meeting a few weeks ago, their paths would never have crossed.

But the circumstances around her invitation weren’t the only weird thing. Bruce himself was weird, too.

A nice kind of weird. An unsocialized kind of weird. She’d noticed it that first day in the elevator and chalked it up to him being an awkward first impression. Not great with people he didn’t know. But the more time she’d spent with him, the more she realized he just didn’t know how to be around other people.

Must be isolating, she thought. To be so alone. No parents. No friends. No girlfriends either, if the papers were to be believed. Just his money and his house and, (she imagined as he was the head of a major corporation and a huge power player in politics) many, many enemies.

It broke her heart. Because it seemed to her, through their days spent in this house together, that Bruce Wayne had a lot to offer people. He just didn’t know how. So, she gently peeled back his layers, finding more and more depths and complexities to him than she ever could have imagined.

This was a crush. She knew that. But the guy had invited her over for Christmas dinner. Just the two of them and Alfred. That had to mean this wasn’t one-sided…

Right?

Or that’s what she thought, anyway, until she was ushered into the formal dining room and placed at one long end of the table while Bruce sat at the other end.

Formal, indeed.

During the soup course, she cleared her throat and raised her voice. “I can’t thank you enough for having me.”

Bruce glanced up from over his bowl. “What?”

“I said I can’t thank you enough for having me,” she repeated.

He answered her, but it was completely unintelligible.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” She asked.

“I said –”

Oh, screw it. Picking up her napkin and her wine glass, she waltzed down to his end of the table and planted herself in the seat next to him.

“This doesn’t seem like you, Bruce.”

“This is what people do, right? Besides, you decorated it so well in here. It would be a shame to waste the atmosphere.”

Pushing away from the table, she headed straight for the swinging kitchen door.

“Where are you going?” Bruce called.

“Just give me ten minutes.”

And then, she was gone. After so many days here, she knew the manor like the back of her hand. She navigated the stairways with ease, and set about improving this celebration. What was Christmas? Closeness? Coziness? Whimsy? Wonder?

She thought it was probably a combination of those things. But really, it was just one day where everyone could feel like they belonged. And she hadn’t belonged in that stuffy dining room.

Neither, she suspected, did Bruce Wayne.

And so it was that, less than half an hour later, she was leading Bruce and Alfred into the house’s cozy basement breakfast nook, which she’d taken the liberty of redecorating with repurposed holiday decor from the rest of the house. This was better. A simple four-top table, cheesy plates retired from an old Christmas party, a mismatch of wine glasses and coffee mugs because she didn’t know her way around Bruce’s kitchen in the slightest.

It wasn’t like any other Christmas she’d ever had before. But for the first time in a long time, crowded around that tiny table with a billionaire and his butler, she felt very much at home.

When the night came to an end, Bruce walked her to out. So close his warmth radiated through his jacket. Far enough away that the slight air between them crackled with possibility.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she said when they reached the grand entryway. It was a stupid farewell, but the first thing that came to her mind. Her body was too focused on the we’re going to say goodbye in a few minutes and he still hasn’t kissed me, is he going to kiss me, oh god do I still have garlic breath from that last course questions to think of anything cleverer.

“I’m glad you came,” Bruce replied, opening the door and unleashing a blister of cold air into the manor. They lingered in the doorway together. “I know it’s not easy giving up your traditions.”

“Even if your traditions include brooding alone and not celebrating the holidays?”

He bent his head and ducked behind that shaggy curtain of hair he never seemed capable of managing. An admission of guilt.

She shrugged. “I’ve been alone for a long time. I thought I’d try something different this year.”

“Glad you did?” Bruce asked.

She was breathless. Anticipating. This was her moment. Her last chance. “Take a step closer and I’ll tell you.”

Bruce glanced upward at the doorway. A slight furrow developed between his thick eyebrows as he saw what hung between him and his guest.

“I didn’t put any mistletoe there,” he muttered.

“I know. I did.”

And with that, she grabbed his lapels and pulled him in for a kiss, oblivious to the snow falling all around them, or the hammering of Bruce’s heart as she unknowingly picked up the broken pieces and put them back together again.

#bruce wayne x oc #battinson imagine #battinson x oc #battinson/reader #bruce wayne/reader

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lingerasthesmokeoncedid · 9 months

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Happy Batman Day - this is the best fic I've ever written.

pairing: pattinson!batman x reader

summary: When her thread on r/GothamUnsolved (claiming that Bruce Wayne is the Batman) goes viral, an amateur sleuth finds herself at odds with both the man - and the Dark Knight.

wc: 10k+

genre: a romantic comedy between two deeply strange weirdos

warnings: canon-typical violence, bruce wayne is bad at google

“After the events of the Gotham Flood, the Batman has become something of a folk hero around the streets of our “fair” city. But what if I told you that the Batman isn’t all he seems? What if I told you that the caped crusader, the man who solved the Riddler and the masked menace of Gotham’s evil-doers isn’t just some guy? What if I told you…he’s Bruce Wayne?” -Excerpt from “Bruce Wayne is The Batman (NOT CLICKBAIT),” a forty-six part reddit thread by TheRealGothamGirl

Three years ago, after devouring a True Crime podcast about the Wayne murders, a nobody barista found her way to the r/GothamUnsolved subreddit. It wasn't much of a hobby, just a forum dedicated to amateur sleuths attempting to piece together the perpetrators of crimes the Gotham PD was unable – or unwilling – to solve themselves. Ever since, in the hours between the dead-end job she worked to one day (hopefully) put herself through law school, she poured over the subreddit and its various threads, picking apart evidence and seeking it out herself

It wasn't much of a hobby, just a forum dedicated to amateur sleuths attempting to piece together the perpetrators of crimes the Gotham PD was unable – or unwilling – to solve themselves. Ever since, in the hours between the dead-end job she worked to one day (hopefully) put herself through law school, she poured over the subreddit and its various threads, picking apart evidence and seeking it out herself

Six of her own investigations had led to arrests, she was proud to say. Not that anyone knew who she was. The forum was entirely anonymous, and she wanted to keep it that way. The last thing she needed was some of Gotham’s criminal element coming after her for exposing their identities or that of their accomplices – if they did, she figured they’d definitely kill her, and considering that the Gotham PD solved fewer homicides than her favorite subreddit, her killer would likely never be found.

But every amateur sleuth like her had a white whale – that one unsolved mystery that would haunt them for the rest of her days. In her case, however, the while whale was more of a dark knight. A Kevlar bat.

She wasn’t the first to drive themselves basically crazy over the identity of The Batman. Many on the forum had tried, only to run into dead ends or talk themselves in circles or point the finger at plainly ridiculous candidates. ( Harvey Dent? Really? ) However, she was - she believed, anyway - the first person to get it right.

So, after months of meticulous research, a few illegal dumpster dives outside of Wayne Enterprises, a few less-than-accidental run-ins with muggers so she could lure the Batman for closer inspection, and some incredible luck, she published her findings: a forty-six part reddit thread detailing most of her evidence, enough evidence that a jury of Bruce Wayne’s peers would have no choice to convict him, enough evidence to prove that the crown prince of Gotham was really its caped crusader, enough evidence to prove to anyone with half a brain that Bruce Wayne was unbelievably, irrevocably, incontrovertibly –

“Not the Batman. No. Definitely not.”

All day, behind the counter of the shitty print shop where she scanned other people’s theses and endlessly shuffled corporate reports into bracketed binders, she’d had to listen and smile and push highlights while customer after customer snickered at the ridiculous theory that had gone viral last night – the “insane” “conspiracy theory” that Bruce Wayne was The Batman. Each of them totally unaware that they were talking to the woman who’d spent months of her life crafting it.

All of that, she could have taken. But when the crackling television on the wall played a newscast with brooding Bruce Wayne snickering at the idea – staring into the camera as he said it, as if he were taunting her, specifically…that was the last straw.

“I don’t know, Mr. Wayne, this online poster seems to have really gotten people talking. Are you sure you’re not The Batman?”

“Miss Vale, how crazy would I have to be to run around Gotham City dressed as a bat?”

Vicki Vale, GCN's resident Bruce Wayne stalker, accepted this with a giggle, allowing Bruce Wayne to disappear into his city offices so she might sum up her ambush interview for the folks at home. But the woman behind the desk at the print shop bit the inside of her cheek.

What Bruce Wayne had just said? It wasn’t a denial. And she did think he was crazy enough to run around the city as a bat.

In fact, she knew he was.

Pinned Comment from Mod_GothamUnsolved: “Hey, Front Page! Due to an increase in inflammatory comments and threats against OP for this post, we are locking down our comments - approved users only for now. Sorry! Don’t be dicks next time! Keep an eye on our subreddit for more Bats-related content, though. OP claims to have more information forthcoming.”

That night when her shift was over, she tucked her keys between her knuckles, carried her umbrella in her free hand, and returned by the better-lit streets – basic operating procedure for anyone who wanted to live to see another day in Gotham – to the crappy loft in the crappier side of town where she lived. Every step was agitated agony. She knew it wasn’t literally true, but it felt as if everyone who laughed, everyone who smiled, everyone who glanced down at their phone, was making fun of her theory.

But it wasn’t a theory. Bruce Wayne was Batman. He was. She just had to prove it–

When she slammed the door of apartment 1319B open, her blood ran cold.

Oh, she was going to prove it alright.

Because there, rifling through one of her cabinets as if it were his own home, was the short, gruff, stocky, suited man she’d seen in more than a dozen photographs of Bruce Wayne and his associates.

“Oh. Mr. Pennyworth. Fancy seeing you here…” She closed the door behind her, rolling her eyes around the room to highlight just how supremely fucked up it was for him to be here. “...in my apartment.”

For his part, Mr. Pennyworth did not seem fazed by the strangeness of his presence there.

“Hello there,” he hummed, perfectly pleasant as he finally closed a cupboard and crossed to face her in the corner of the room that served as what could generously be called kitchenette. “I’m afraid we haven’t been formally introduced.”

“No,” she said, “but I bet you already know who I am. Don’t you?”

No denial. Instead, he slid a file across the grotty, coffee-stained countertop that served as her cook surface, her mail table, her desk, and her dining room. With one hesitant hand, she flicked it open to find exactly what she’d expected: pages and pages of print outs. Not just of her online post history, but of everything else. She couldn’t help but smile. No, beam . This was confirmation. She had found The Batman. And The Batman had sent his little minion to take her off of their trail. Only a truly threatened man would uncover the identity behind her online handle, break into her home, and present her with what looked like a blackmail folder. It basically screamed, “I’m guilty. I'm the Batman.”

“You’ve caused a bit of trouble for my boss,” Mr. Pennyworth informed her.

“And he’s caused a lot of trouble for the city.”

The man sniffed. “Unless you call causing a shortage of black clothing and Radiohead records trouble , we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point, Miss.”

Her lip twitched. The butler had jokes. That delighted her in a way she hadn’t expected. Still, she played dumb. “I can’t imagine what Bruce Wayne’s personal fixer would want with little old me.”

“This is all very embarrassing for Mr. Wayne, as I’m sure you can understand. Being associated with some kook–”

“Isn’t it more embarrassing to actually be that kook?” She mused. “Maybe if he didn’t want to be associated, he would, you know, stop being Batman?”

The slightest flash of annoyance crossed Mr. Pennyworth’s face. “–But he understands that you have a keen investigative mind and admires your tenacity. Even if it’s turned up the wrong result. He thinks he can help with that.”

And here it was. The only logical conclusion of Bruce Wayne discovering her identity. He was going to bribe her. Well, he could have her killed, but that would be so sloppy. These rich guys. Always the same. “Oh, yeah?”

“The Wayne Foundation would like to make a donation to your education,” Mr. Pennyworth said, passing another envelope across the desk, this time, sealed and check-sized. “A fully funded scholarship to Gotham University’s law program. You could train your mind. Put that tenacity to good use. Make the world a better place.”

“And stop pursuing this Bruce Wayne as Batman thing all together, I guess?”

“Well, I imagine you won’t have time,” he said, the implication clear. Her silence in exchange for this money, for her future. “What with all of that coursework you’ll be doing.”

She picked up the check, toying with its weight in her hand. How strange that something so small could have such power to change her life. A deep breath, then: “I appreciate this. I hope you tell Mr. Wayne that.”

“I will–”

With three easy gestures, she ripped the check into pieces and resigned them to the nearby trash can. “And you can also tell him that the next time he wants to intimidate me, he should put on his little costume and do it himself.”

UPDATED TO ADD: Today, I had a visit from Alfred Pennyworth, Mr. Bruce Wayne’s personal fixer (mentioned in sections 1, 2, 4, 7-45 of my investigation). He very politely invited me to cease my investigation into Bruce Wayne. And told me that if I did, the Wayne Foundation would happily pay for me to finally go to law school, something I’ve wanted to do but never have been able to afford. For anyone who still doubts my theory, I think Mr. Pennyworth pretty much proved it. Why would Bruce Wayne need to buy me off if what I said wasn’t true? Don’t believe me? See the security camera stills below - taken inside of my apartment. That’s Alfred Pennyworth, going through my cabinets. Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Pennyworth, but I’m here for the truth. Bruce Wayne’s money may be able to buy a lot of things in this town, but it’s not going to buy my silence."- Excerpt from “Bruce Wayne is The Batman (NOT CLICKBAIT),” a forty-seven part reddit thread by TheRealGothamGirl

Every Tuesday, on her only day off, she had a little ritual. First, she went to the Gotham Public Library to sort through the public records and pick up a new smutty romance book to read before bedtime over the next week. Then, she went to the courthouse and police station to pull any reports she might have needed for her research. And finally, she would go to the deli behind the police station, order the cheapest sandwich on the menu (usually given at a discount, as she requested day-old bread instead of fresh), and sit on her favorite park bench to enjoy her paperwork, her sandwich, and - on rare days like these - the sunshine.

However, on her walk to the bench today, a long, black coat wearing a tall, imposing man knocked her off of her path when their bodies accidentally collided. As she stumbled back from the force of him, her papers flying everywhere and her sandwich bag tumbling into the nearby grass, a brittle, soft voice reached her ears:

“Excuse me, miss–”

Familiar. She’d heard that voice before.

Crouched down to grab her papers, she looked up to see that the voice belonged to just the man she’d suspected – or feared.

It was Bruce Wayne. In the flesh. Without his armor or his mask. And when their eyes met, he smiled at her. Not a big smile, not anything he might have flashed in the papers, but something softer. Almost genuine. Almost good enough to awaken a whole sea of butterflies in the pit of her stomach.

“Oh,” he said, wincing his greeting. A little shy. A little awkward. “Hello. I'm sorry about that. Here. Can I...?”

He crouched down to help her. For a moment, she lost her breath and every word she’d ever learned. There was nothing but him. She’d been close to him before – once. But other than that fleeting exchange, one she was sure he didn’t remember, she only knew him from photographs and archival footage. In those videos, he’d always seemed…

Well, not to be rude, but a little bit like if the sickly orphan boy in a Charles Dickens novel had been cast in a 90’s grunge band’s music video.

In person, though, so close, he was something completely different. Sure, the basics of him were still the same, but there was an intoxicating indirectness about him – as though he didn’t understand the basics of human interaction…but something about her made him want to try.

She shook off the feeling almost as soon as it occurred to her.

There wasn’t anything special about her. This wasn’t a chance meeting in the park. It was another attempt to con her into dropping her Batman posts.

“That’s cute,” she muttered, attempting to pile her papers back into some semblance of order.

Bruce Wayne offered up stray pages as though he weren’t a billionaire crouched down in the middle of a public park. “What is?”

“This isn’t some chance meeting, Bruce Wayne . You’re pretending to run into me just a few days after your bruiser broke into my apartment.”

She glanced up to check out his reaction. A muscle in his jaw tightened and he looked anywhere but her.

“I didn’t ask him to do that. And–”

He stopped himself short, as though he’d caught himself almost saying something he shouldn’t have. When he handed her the last of her papers, she prodded:

“And?”

“And he didn’t break in,” Bruce mumbled. “He said the door wasn’t locked.”

“I notice you’re not denying the fake run-in.”

“This isn’t fake," he protested, at last. "I don’t even know you–”

Lie. How was a man with a whole-ass double life so bad at lying?

Maybe that was why he barely made it out of Wayne Manor or his offices. Maybe he was such a bad liar that if he showed his face in public too much, the whole world would see through him. She fought to fit her folders back into her bag, her sandwich quite forgotten nearby.

“Bruce. I discovered your super-secret identity. You’re not fooling me with this whole innocent guy act.”

Dropping the pretense of this meeting being an accident – thank God, she was glad he didn’t see fit to insult her intelligence any longer – he leaned forward, lowering his voice as though they were sharing a confidence. “I don’t have a secret identity.”

He’d gotten closer to her than he’d probably meant, but she could tell he wasn’t going to back down until he had his answer. So, for a moment, they shared the same air, huffing out cold puffs of powdered breath onto the frigid afternoon wind. His lips – so easily identifiable by anyone with eyes as the Batman’s lips – were pink from the cold. She dragged her gaze from them, then met his.

“Okay, then,” she said, squaring up to him. “Prove it.”

“Prove what, that I’m not Batman?”

“Yes. And you can do that by taking me to dinner.”

404. Batman error.

The man blinked, apparently not expecting her to ask him that question – or, more bafflingly to her, shocked that any woman would want to go on a date with him.

“I…” A muscle twitched between his eyes. Confusion. “I’m sorry?”

She practically sang her answer, quite pleased with herself. How wonderful to play with him this way, to tease him with a challenge she knew he would never meet…to taunt herself with a date she knew she would never get. But it was fun to pretend, just for a second. “The Batman goes out every night between eleven forty-seven and and eleven fifty-two. He doesn’t disappear until sunrise. Take me to dinner. If he’s out tonight and you’re with me, that will prove that you’re not The Batman.”

It would have been so easy for Bruce Wayne to turn on his heel and abandon her. To call a full-court press assault on her character, to degrade her as a crazy conspiracy theorist and resign her silly little theory to the pages of one of those tabloids that had gotten rich off of smearing his dead parents with horrible theories of their own.

But he didn’t. And she wondered…

She wondered if maybe he wanted to have dinner with her.

“Eleven forty-seven is a late dinner, don’t you think?” He asked, a cooly conspiratorial glint in his eye.

“We’ll go to a diner.” She shrugged. “I like waffles.”

“Dinner,” he repeated, confirming. His lips tipping up again in that nearly-smile of his. “I’ll pick you up at 11:45.”

Going for her forgotten sandwich, she rolled her eyes. It was a fun game while it lasted. But she wouldn’t be falling prey to his promises. She wasn’t a fool. “Sure you will, Batman.”

“I’m not–”

But before he could finish that protest, she disappeared around a nearby tree, biting her bottom lip to keep from laughing.

COMMENT FROM @ BALLCHUGGER 69: Batman is the greatest hero. I don’t care who he is. Leave him alone, whore.

That night, she didn’t even bother to get dressed for a date. Didn’t even pretend it was a possibility. No, if anyone had come to pick her up from her shitbox apartment on the wrong side of the city, they would have found her sprawled on her couch in a pair of sweats and a sports bra, stealing internet from her next door neighbor so she could scroll reddit’s latest Bruce Wayne as Batman megathread and listen closely to a livestream of the Gotham PD scanner.

Sure enough, about ten minutes after Bruce was supposed to meet her for dinner, crackle-voice cops informed their comrades that the Bat had just strung up three low-level mob figures up by the ankles from a lamppost.

Ten minutes after that, a knock on the door drew her to it. But when she opened, there was only a small, weighty eggshell envelope waiting for her, taped just beneath the peep hole. When she opened it, a handwritten letter under Wayne Enterprises letterhead informed her that Bruce regretted his absence, but had been called away on an urgent matter.

She smirked as she tossed the letter carelessly into the trash. She’d always known he wasn’t going to show up. The Batman was never going to ignore the city when it was in danger – even if it meant protecting his identity.

She had to admit: she admired him for that.

REPLY TO @ BALLCHUGGER69: I never said he wasn’t a hero. I think he is. In fact, I know he is. So we agree there. But as to the whore comment…if Batman is so heroic, I don’t think he would like you talking to ladies like that.

Sometime around midnight, she decided - for no particular reason - to go for a little walk down to Bowery. The Batman’s main territory. She’d seen him here more than once - and she wanted to see for herself that Bruce Wayne wasn’t at some high society dinner or in his Wayne Enterprises high-rise, but out there, on the streets. Doing what he did best - hunting.

She stuck to the shadows, one hand on the pepper spray in her pocket and the other on the heavy handle of the umbrella she always carried for protection. But soon enough, she found him. Guiding a frightened woman to the safety of a police car, while her three assailants scrambled away.

When Batman turned, his glazed eyes caught hers in the shadow. She smirked. He could run after the bad guys, or he could confront her.

Again, he chose the noble thing. He ran after the criminals.

Admirable. And fortuitous, as the mud from last night's rain left perfect copies of his boot prints behind. Boot prints that she meticulously photographed for later examination.

@ CKent_DailyPlanetNews: After independently verifying recent revelations regarding Wayne Enterprise Employee Alfred Pennyworth and the reddit user who asserts that Bruce Wayne is Batman, I have agreed to cover this story for The Daily Planet. More developments to follow.

For the next few days, after Clark Kent reached out to her anonymous account on Reddit and they set up a time to discuss her Batman finds, she went about her normal routine and tried not to think about Bruce Wayne or his dark knight counterpart. She did her job, raced home, and dove into the other outstanding amateur sleuthing cases that had been piling up during the whole Batman thing.

But she should have known that once the Clark Kent news broke and the internet exploded over it, Bruce Wayne would not be far behind.

One afternoon, in the print shop, she was five paragraphs into a really good sex scene in her book when a hand appeared on the desk in front of her, opening and closing into a loose fist - uncomfortable, not threatening. She glanced up to find Bruce Wayne standing there. As unbearably awkward in real life as he was confident and dangerous as Batman.

She waited for him to speak first. When he finally did, it just came out:

“...Hi.”

“Hi,” she said in her best customer service voice. Trying to ignore how his unbroken stare made her want to melt into his stupid, sexy arms and act out one of those romance novel scenes she’d just been reading. The only thing that stopped her from doing so was the knowledge that she’d gotten him right where she wanted him. He was panicked. And panicked men always made mistakes. Mistakes that could lead to him outright confirming his real identity. “Can I help you?”

“Could I…” He swallowed, trying to strengthen his weak voice. “Can we talk?”

“As opposed to what we’re doing right now?”

“Alone, I mean.”

With a flourish, she rose from behind the printing desk and breezed past him to straighten the already-straightened display of staplers and graphic calculators.

“If you’re here to ask me out, I’m sorry, but my schedule is all full. I don’t go on second dates with guys who stand me up, Mr. Batman.”

“ Don’t call me that .”

It was a growl, the closest she’d yet seen to The Batman flashing past his Bruce Wayne exterior. A thrill shot up and down her spine. Keep him talking . She didn’t want to let him go. She loved this dance that they were doing, this go away closer they played. “You saw Clark Kent’s tweet, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know why you’re doing this–”

“Of course you don’t,” she mumbled. “You never even asked.”

“--But please. Stop. The city needs Batman–”

Clearly, he thought speaking faster and clearer and something approaching a big businessman voice was going to spook her. But she would not be deterred. She’d thought this through a million times. “And they need Bruce Wayne, too. I agree. I just wonder why they can’t have both at the same time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing.” He still hadn’t asked her why she was doing this. And every time their eyes met, she waited for some flash of recognition that she now knew would never come. Even if she told him now what she meant by that little comment, he wouldn’t listen. Why waste her breath? “Nothing you’d be interested in hearing, anyway.”

Rounding one of the shelves she stocked, he came face-to-face with her. The rack was the only barrier between them.

“I am asking you to stop this,” he pleaded, low and gentle.

“Or what? You’ll make me stop?”

“What do you want? What can I give you?”

Her lips tugged. Smug. “I told you, Mister Wayne. I want to go to dinner.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Well, then. I think we’re done here. As it happens, I have a meeting with Clark Kent later this week to talk about my findings.”

“You’ll be making a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Because one day, if you do this, maybe you’ll need Batman, and I won’t be there.”

That felt like a threat. It felt like a slap. He instantly recoiled, as if ashamed that he’d said it. But when he opened his mouth to no doubt apologize, she beat him to it.

She’d caught him. The harder he tried to deny the truth, the more he kept showing his hand. “... You won’t be there? Sounds like an admission to me.”

Bruce adjusted his coat, drawing the collar up around his neck. He ignored her question and took to convincing her – which sounded more and more like he was convincing himself. “This conversation is over. I’m not your Batman. Your ridiculous post is only going to get people hurt. No one will believe you. And you don’t have any proof, just conjecture and speculation and probably some very flimsy ‘evidence.’ Nothing can link me to The Batman. Nothing .”

She could have laughed. She almost did. But she managed to stop it. Laughing would have given away her whole play. Adopting a fake serious tone, she nodded solemnly. “Of course. Yeah. Silly of me. You . Batman. It’s ridiculous. I’ll just go ahead and cancel my meeting with Clark Kent.”

Something flashed in his expression. Relief? Gratitude? A tint of regret? “I…Thank you.”

With that, he went for the door, but only made it two steps before she called him back.

No proof, he’d said. Please. As if she would accuse the most powerful man in Gotham of being The Batman without any actual evidence.

“Just one more thing, Bruce.”

“Yes?”

When he turned back around, he found himself face-to-face with her phone screen, which flashed a perfect picture of Batman’s boot print, which she’d snapped during their last encounter.

The blood rushed from Bruce’s face. She smirked.

“What size shoe do you wear?”

COMMENT BY DENT4PREZ: Yo, GothamGirl, any more Batman updates?

REPLY BY TheRealGothamGirl: I’m working on another case right now. The world does not revolve around Batman!

She wasn’t sure what made her hold back the boot print picture. Considering Bruce Wayne’s shoe size was a matter of public record thanks to some particularly freaky BW TikTok stans, it would have been a significant piece of evidence to add to the pile currently being combed over by dozens of amateur sleuths like herself.

Maybe it was the slight panic she’d caught in his expression when she showed it to him. Perhaps it was the fact that if he did fully prove him without a shadow of a doubt…he’d have no reason to find her again, ending their brief flirtations.

Maybe she didn’t want to lose him, something she knew would happen if she pushed the truth any further.

It was selfish, she knew. To want to keep him. He belonged to the people, and so did the truth.

But another day or two couldn’t hurt. Especially now that he seemed to hate her.

One day, maybe you’ll need Batman and he won’t be there .

It was those words ringing in her ears when her latest cold case investigation took her to The Narrows, one of Gotham’s worst neighborhoods. The evidence had led her here, to an abandoned warehouse where she believed someone had stashed the trophies of the murders they’d committed, so a bit of light breaking and entering was on the menu tonight. But she wasn’t worried. She’d done this a dozen times. Narrows or no, it was an abandoned warehouse. What were the odds that anyone would –

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing in there?”

She was halfway out of the window when a man staring up at her from the street caught her. Damn. She was nearly homefree.

Adrenaline kicking into action, she threw herself out of the window, careful not to jostle the bag slung across her body – the one containing the killer’s treasures. The man was on her in a second, lunging with everything he had. All of her self-defense training flooded back to her. She dodged him at first, then knocked him back with her umbrella. The next time he approached, though, he caught her on the back foot, and before she knew it, he had her pinned against the wall.

Something sharp pierced her side.

She screamed.

The edges of her world went fuzzy.

Fuck . Had he stabbed her?

The blood loss was swift. His rancid breath on her cheek turned her stomach. But with one last flurry of energy, she emptied her pepper spray into his eyes, and he scrambled out into the darkness. Probably convinced that she wasn’t a threat to him anymore anyway. After all, he’d stabbed her .

When he abandoned their little drama, she crumbled down the wall, pinning her hands to her wound. She had to get out of there. Had to fix herself up. But she was…so tired. Down to her bones. The kind of exhaustion that made sleeping on the ground of a dark alleyway in The Narrows with a bag full of a serial killer’s treasures seem appealing.

Shock, she realized vaguely. This was shock. She was in shock. That’s why the wound didn’t hurt. That’s why she wanted to sleep. That’s why she didn’t notice – not at first – when a cloaked figure stalked into her line of sight.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned, lolling onto her side at the sight of him.

The Batman. Of all the dark alleyways in all the world, he had to walk into hers.

“Were you following me?” He growled, eyes darting up to the warehouse, where he instantly spotted the window she’d broken to force entry not twenty minutes ago.

“No,” she spit, tasting blood on her teeth now.

“Then why were you–”

“I was on another case.” She followed his line of sight as it traveled from the window down to her bag, which had sprawled open during the scuffle. With those weird shades in his mask, his expression proved unreadable, but she spotted the slightest tensing of his jaw. Ah, so she hadn’t followed him and he hadn’t followed her. They’d just both been hunting the same criminal and gotten here at the same time. “It just happened to be yours, I guess.”

It was only then that he looked at her – really looked at her, not in panic, not in rage – and noticed the red blooming behind the hands clenched at her stomach. His jaw parted this time, but he made no move to approach.

“Leave me alone. I can–I can–You already said what you would do if you found me in trouble. And I assume you’re a man with, like, a code or whatever. It’s what I deserve. Besides,” she wheezed, indicating the police sirens that had just gone off somewhere in the vicinity. “You have bad guys to catch.”

God , she was going to die here. She was going to die here and Batman was going to leave her to do it because he had more heroic things to do and also because she’d been threatening to expose him and also he was angry with her and–

Suddenly, he was all she could see. Kneeling at her side, arms at the ready to collect her.

“Can I touch you?”

“I bet you say that to all the criminals,” she snarked, the blood loss finally getting to her head.

He remained still. Stoic. He would not be touching her unless she gave her consent. Slowly, very slowly, she nodded. “Yeah. Fine. Go ahead.”

No sooner were the words out than he scooped her into his arms, cradling her against his chest, and walking her out of the alley.

She tried not to think about the firm warmth of his chest or how right it felt to curl up in his arms. Tried not to think about the easy way he picked her up – as if she was nothing, rather than the generously curved woman she’d always been.

When he lodged her in the back seat of what appeared to be what she’d pejoratively termed in her reddit post, “the Batmobile,” they were silent. He worked quickly, positioning her so he could withdraw a first aid kit and set to stitching up the wound gushing onto his smooth leather seats. She watched him with hazy vision – cataloging the precision with which he sank a needle into her ribcage and filled her with morphine, the way he cooed quietly when she hissed as he began stitching her up, the delicate care he took with picking the fabric of her clothes out of the gash in her side.

“I could blow up your life tomorrow,” she muttered. Though whether she was speaking to the bat or the man behind the mask, she didn’t know.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You could.”

“But you’re still doing this. Why?”

“You have your reasons for doing what you’re doing.” His hands were gentle. So gentle for a vigilante. She was struck by the urge to rip those gloves off and see if those hands were as gentle as Bruce Wayne’s had been when he’d first touched her. “I have mine.”

“I hope I get to hear them someday,” she mumbled, teasing. “Maybe at dinner.”

“Batman doesn’t do dinner,” he said, apparently still trying to engage in his little game of pretend. As if he hadn’t just as good as admitted who he was. As if this night didn’t change anything.

The last thing she remembered, before she passed out from the drugs he’d given her, was the chuckle he rewarded her with when she replied, “Maybe not. But Bruce Wayne might.”

SIGNAL MESSAGE FROM CLARK KENT: Are we still on for our meeting tomorrow? I’m flying down tomorrow morning.

SIGNAL MESSAGE FROM ANONYMOUS: Flying? It’s like an hour drive. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of environmentalist fighting Lex Luthor, Mr. Daily Planet?

SIGNAL MESSAGE FROM CLARK KENT: Typo. Damn autocorrect. Are we on?

SIGNAL MESSAGE FROM ANONYMOUS: Yeah.

SIGNAL MESSAGE FROM CLARK KENT: Make sure to bring the documents you mentioned in your posts.

The next morning, she woke up in her apartment. The wounds were the only proof that the night before had even happened. The Batman had saved her life. And according to the police blotter, he hadn’t stopped there. He’d taken her evidence and caught that killer – and on his way out of The Narrows after that, he’d apparently had enough time to stop two muggings.

As someone without health insurance who lived in the most dangerous city in the country, she was pretty used to attending Youtube medical school. Because of that, she had no trouble cleaning out Batman’s tidy stitches and keeping the bandages clean and dry. What she did have trouble with? Not thinking about him every time she moved. When the pain made her twitch, when the scabs begged to be scratched, with every bandage change, she couldn’t help but think about those warm, gentle hands against her skin. The easy, uncomplicated way he’d saved her. Those quiet words they’d shared in the dark.

It made her interview with Clark Kent, conducted in a small coffee shop off the beaten path, one where neither of them would be recognized, a little awkward. Every time she breathed too deeply, she was reminded of Batman – and the potential consequences of being here with a powerful journalist, her arms full of proof that would link him to Bruce Wayne.

“Miss–”

She shook her head as Clark fumbled with the recording app on his phone. “I think it’s better if I don’t use my name. You know it. You’ve confirmed my identity. That should be enough. Anonymous sources are still a thing, aren’t they?”

He flashed a grin. Friendly. Wholesome. Thoroughly un-Bruce-like. “Certainly. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Anonymous.”

The Muzak in the coffee shop stretched between them as he flipped through his pages of notes. For her part, she stared blankly into the distance past the nearby window. Her hand drifted to her ribcage, pressing past her coat and her shirt and the bandage straight to her slow-healing wound.

“What do you think will happen?” She asked, vaguely.

Clark adjusted his glasses. “What’s that?”

“When the people know, for sure, I mean, not just my speculation or whatever, that Bruce Wayne is Batman? What do you think will happen?”

“I can't see the future or anything, but I guess he'll be arrested. He’ll have to be, if there’s ever going to be any faith in Gotham’s institutions again. If my article has anything to say about it, that’s where he’ll end up. Isn’t that what you want? For the Batman to stop terrorizing the streets?”

No. No, it wasn’t what she’d wanted at all. She’d never wanted that. Clark Kent seemed like a decent enough guy, but… no .

Leaping to her feet, she grabbed at the briefcase of Wayne-related documents.

“You know – I forgot – I have a work thing.”

Nearly choking, Clark gawked at her. “But I came all the way from Metropolis.”

“I’m sorry, I just –”

“Leave the documents, at least.”

He bolted up from his chair, grabbing for her.

Too fast. Inhumanly fast.

She tried to wrench out of his grasp. “No–”

“Wait–”

With a twist, she stumbled back. Clark remained unmovable, but his head tipped suddenly, knocking his glasses clean off of his face. Giving her a perfect look at him.

It was just a split second, but a split second was all it took for an idea to plant in the mossy soil of her mind and take immovable root. Then, when his eyes focused on her bag, it already began to sprout.

“Sorry. You’re right,” he said, straightening, as if he’d already gotten everything he needed from her in that single look.

Which, she suspected, he had.

@ CKent_DailyPlanetNews: Confidential sources have withdrawn from the Bruce Wayne story. However, with the help of newly uncovered documents, I will diligently follow the truth wherever it takes me.

After Clark tweeted about her withdrawing from the story, she went home and deleted all of her threads on the Gotham Unsolved subreddit. She’d kept the evidence in a sealed locker in her house, and the digital footprint would surely live on forever, but at least she’d done something . Once she’d closed the book on Batman, she turned her attention to other matters, other cases that needed solving, other unsolved mysteries she hoped she wouldn’t screw up as royally as she had this one.

The Batman case was the first time she’d ever regretted solving one. She needed another win, anything to remind her that she was on the good side of this city, that she was contributing to its salvation rather than its decline.

Which is how, on a particularly snowy Tuesday afternoon, she found herself hunched over a cup of coffee (bought in place of her usual sandwich, because it was too cold to sit out here without coffee and she couldn’t afford both) and her records on her park bench when a shadow passed over her.

Not just any shadow. Bruce Wayne’s shadow.

“Oh. Mr. Wayne. I didn’t - I didn’t think I would -” the stammering continued a minute more before she finally slammed the folder in her lap closed and tried again: “How are you?”

“This is your spot, isn’t it?” He asked, not answering her question.

No wonder. He looked like shit. The bags under his eyes had gotten darker and more bruised. His coat engulfed him. She tried to tease some life back into him – anything to stop staring at the snowflakes currently settling on his eyelashes and melting into his lips.

“Spying on me again?”

He shrugged, but it worked. He smiled – just barely. Like most of his smiles. “My office is just up there." He pointed to the Wayne Enterprises building towering over the northern stretch of the park. "I see you down here sometimes. Just like I saw that the Batman threads have all been taken down. And that Clark Kent lost his source. And that someone solved the Kyminsky murder.”

This time, it was her turn to shrug.

“I just figured it out. Batman brought the guy in. I don’t deserve any credit.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But you might deserve dinner.”

Against her better judgment, her heart fluttered. A traitorous hummingbird trying to get free and fly straight for him. “Really?”

“Really. But at eight. Not eleven-fifty. I have a lot to show you and I can’t do it in an all-night diner.”

Intriguing. She probably should have said no. It was undoubtedly better to keep her distance from Bruce Wayne, especially after all that had transpired between them. But he had to know she couldn’t resist a good mystery. “Where, then?”

“Wayne Manor.”

APARTMENT 1319B RECENT SEARCH HISTORY:

What to do if you have weird feelings for a vigilante?

What to do if a billionaire invites you to his house?

What to wear if a billionaire invites you to his house?

Do billionaires brick their enemies up in amontillado cellars anymore?

How to escape bricked-over amontillado cellar

What do rich people serve at dinner?

How to eat lobster without looking like a poor person

Wayne Manor was everything she’d expected. A gothic mansion set out past the edges of the city, it filled in the picture of what she believed about Bruce Wayne. It was sort of a reflection of him. Locked up, crumbling, defiantly enduring, and impossibly beautiful.

The place was so grand that the second she stepped up on the grand marble steps, she felt underdressed. A feeling that only intensified when Mr. Pennyworth opened the door and snarked at her.

“Welcome to Wayne Manor, Miss. I see you’ve dressed for the occasion.”

Behind Alfred’s tuxedo-ed back, she could hear the tinkling of fine music and the pop of a champagne bottle. They’d been originally supposed to go to a diner . How was she supposed to know that Bruce wanted her to dress formally ? She flushed. “He didn’t tell me what to wear, and wouldn't you know it? All of my gowns are at the cleaner’s.”

Alfred scoffed. “You’re–”

But the arrival of his master cut him off. Bruce Wayne stepped into view, looking like an evening star wrapped up in a ten-thousand dollar suit. He still hadn’t gotten the hang of styling his hair like a normal human being, she noticed, and there were several bruises beginning to surface just beneath his collar and at the skin near his shirt cuffs, but even so –

He was so handsome. Especially when he assessed her like he did now.

“You’re perfect,” he said simply, finishing Alfred's sentence.

Having handed her coat to Alfred when he waved for it, she gestured down to her jeans and flannel combination. He was in a goddamn tux and she was in jeans . “I don’t feel very perfect.”

“You are exactly who I’ve been looking for.”

That sounds like something a murderer or Batman or a guy in love would say – dear God, please be the second one.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Alfred said. “Master Wayne doesn’t eat much, but–”

The tops of Bruce’s cheeks flushed. “– Alfred –”

“But he insisted on only the best. I’ll just be in the kitchen, preparing.”

Without another word, the man was gone. She’d done so much research into Alfred and Bruce, but none of her documents ever could have taught her this: they cared about each other. Almost like father and son. It was cute, the way Bruce ducked his head, embarrassed, and apologized for Alfred. Domestic in a way she hadn’t expected.

There was a lot she hadn’t expected, it turned out. The living room of Wayne Manor was well-appointed, but clearly weathered from lack of use. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet and despite the obvious attempts to spruce the place up, she couldn’t help but notice that the entire room, while it glittered from golden candle light and smelled like the fresh, home-cooking wafting from the nearby kitchen, carried with it the oppressive weight of grief.

Suddenly, so much of Bruce made sense. He was not some playboy who masqueraded as Batman to make meaning out of his useless life. He was not doing it for the attention. He was not a man with a death wish.

He was just…so, so sad. And so very lonely. And trying to right a wrong for the universe that had never been righted for him. Saving other people so they’d never have to know what he’d been through.

As she leaned against a nearby window and watched him pour champagne for them both, she blinked away tears at that revelation. She’d always been on Bruce’s side. But now? Now she actually understood him. And that broke her heart a little.

“I really am sorry about my clothes,” she said, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “I thought this would be, like, a casual thing, not a–”

“A date?”

A date. Even after the tuxedos and champagne, it hadn’t even occurred to her that this was a date.

She’d thought….

Well…

She’d thought…it was, like, a detente. A cessation of hostilities. A friendly armistice.

But a date…?

Once more, she swept the room. Champagne. Music. Lights. A home-cooked meal. Bruce doing that almost-smile thing he did whenever she was around. Color and life back in his face, something that had been sorely missing the last time she’d seen him.

Yeah. A date. That checked out. Heat flooded her cheeks. She stared down at her shoes.

“Yeah.”

“I understand,” he said, handing her a champagne flute.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He clinked their glasses together. Sardonic and self-deprecating. “I wouldn’t want to go out with the Batman either.”

Her eyes widened. This was not a mistake. This was not a slip-up. It was purposeful. He’d invited her on a date, invited her to dinner, and was telling her the one secret he’d been trying so hard to keep. Retiring her glass to a nearby table, she repeated the word, “...Batman.”

He nodded once. At last, a confirmation. “ Batman .”

Before she could think better of it, she charged towards him, to ask him more questions, to probe him for answers – only for the aggressive action to tug at her stitches, causing her to painfully twist and stumble…

“ Shit –”

“Careful there–”

…right into his arms.

Suddenly, the pain in her side was the furthest thing from her mind.

Even if he hadn’t just confessed the truth to her, she would have known it was him just from this embrace. It was the same one she’d experienced in the alley that night – the one where he saved her life. It was an awkward hold. Soft in some places and stiff in others. Close but not close enough for her liking. Unpracticed. As if he hadn’t known the non-violent touch of someone in too, too long.

It washed her in peace from the flushed crown of her head all the way down to her untied shoelaces.

For a breathless moment, neither of them moved. But the music from the old stereo played something soft and lovely…and before they knew that they were even doing it, as if twisted in some magical spell cast by the speakers, they were swaying.

“Do you like to dance?” Bruce asked, his breath tickling her neck.

“No.”

“Me either,” he agreed.

And yet…there they were. Dancing. Each of them equally unwilling to let the other one go.

She didn’t know what that meant. Only that it felt right, being there in his touch.

What a miracle – that her life would bring her to this place, this time, this man. All because she nearly died one night six months ago - not that he knew about that yet.

“Why did you do it?” He asked, melting into her touch.

“Do what?”

“Try to expose me. And then stop.”

She tilted her head until their eyes met, giving him full, silent permission to survey her. When nothing sparked in him, she asked: “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

No answer. She tucked herself back into the crook of her body, enjoying his touch while she still could.

“I had my suspicions about you before the flood. But it seemed so impossible. Bruce Wayne, the Batman? Of course not. But then…I was in that stadium. And those things you put in your eyes when you wear that mask, the things that keep people from seeing your eyes? They shorted in the water. After all that research I’d done about you…when you pulled me out of that water, I recognized them. You have very distinctive eyes, Mr. Wayne.”

Did he notice that he’d tightened his grip around her waist? As though he were now the one drowning and she was the only thing holding him above the swells?

“I know you think I wanted this city to destroy you. But I don’t. I think you’re a hero.” She was digging her fingers into the soft fabric of his suit jacket now. Hopefully, he thought she was just holding onto him for support because of her injury – not for the reason that being this close to him made her knees weak and her heartbeat at a rate she considered medically unsafe. “And for awhile, I believed that if the world knew that Bruce Wayne and Batman were the same guy…you could be even more of an inspiration. Someone with everything trying to do something for those who have nothing . The man everyone knows, fighting for the forgotten. The Crown Prince of Gotham saving us peasants down below.”

She teased him with that last bit. But he was as serious as he had been the moment before.

“And now?” He prompted, pulling away so she could no longer hide in the crook of his neck. Under his stare, she knew she couldn’t falter.

“Now, I just want you to keep fighting - even if you have to do it in the shadows.”

Their breath intermingled. It felt like the start of something. His attention flickered down to her lips –

“Master Wayne.”

The sound of Alfred’s voice made her twitch. She moved to step away, but Bruce held her fast, even as Alfred raised a judgmental eyebrow at their romantic clinch.

“Dinner is served,” he said, lingering in the doorway.

Through it all, she realized that Bruce had never looked away from her. And he didn’t when he spoke again.

“I’m sorry, Alfred. I think we have something else to do first.”

BRUCE WAYNE RECENT SEARCH HISTORY, SCRUBBED at 7:58 PM:

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There wasn’t much Bruce Wayne cared to examine in himself. He knew, in vague strokes, that he was obsessive and driven by pain, and desperate for justice in any form it could take. He knew he didn’t want to be the monster that stalked the shadows anymore, but a hero who actually helped people.

And he knew that from the moment he met this strange woman in the park, something within him shifted. She was a threat to him, an existential one he should have done everything in his power to destroy. He was a billionaire, after all. It should have been easy to tie her up in legal battles for the rest of her life, to pay for bots to drown out her posts, to keep upping the ante of Alfred’s bribery until she had no choice but to accept.

Still. He didn’t. She was brilliant and infuriating and matched him turn-for-turn. Every time he thought he had her figured out, she dodged in the exact opposite direction. Whether she was relentlessly taunting him about his secret identity or flirting or asking him to dinner or sneaking pictures of his boot prints or crumbling under his hands as he healed her or giving up the story with Clark Kent or doing that scrunching thing with her nose she did when she was thinking too hard or fiddling with the handle of her umbrella she uselessly kept nearby for protection or flashing those intelligent, sharp eyes of hers…

He was fascinated. He couldn’t remember the last time something other than the underworld of Gotham had fascinated him. Maybe it was this new change in him, the one that had been brewing ever since The Flood. Maybe, as he returned slowly from Vengeance back to his humanity, maybe his heart was slowly awakening, too. Maybe all of those feelings he’d chained away for so long were resurfacing.

In any case…something shot straight through his heart when she stepped down the stairs into The Cave and her lips parted in a wondrous smile. Only, for the first time in his life, a sudden bolt to his chest didn’t hurt. It blossomed into something warm and unfamiliar.

“What is this?” She breathed, eyes wide and uncertain. “Why have you brought me here?”

“It’s my headquarters,” he said, leading her down the rickety steps until he reached the floor of the spotlight-illuminated tunnel. He suddenly found it impossible to look at her. As if he were afraid she would suddenly pass judgment and he would be found wanting. He steeled himself for what was to come. From the start, she’d known the truth. He knew she knew the truth. And she knew that he knew the truth. But this was a final confirmation. An admission of guilt, undeniable, that could not be retracted once made. “And I’m showing you because… Because I’m Batman.”

Miracle of miracles, she didn’t run out of the door. She didn’t scream and throw things at him. She didn’t even feign surprise. Instead, she chuckled. Bruce felt his own lips twitch. When was the last time anyone had laughed in this house? “Yeah, no shit. I already knew that. I mean why are you showing this to me?”

That was the question Alfred had asked about a half-dozen times since Bruce had decided to bring her here – a decision he’d made the moment he found out she’d scuttled Clark Kent’s Batman story. And the answer he’d given Alfred was the same answer he’d give her now.

But it wasn’t the whole answer, not really. The whole truth would have been you’re a damn good detective and I want an excuse to get close to you – to stay close to you . Instead, he edited the truth, tailoring it for this moment:

“Because you’re a damn good detective. And I don’t think I can do this alone anymore.” He paused. “Or maybe I don’t want to.”

Her skepticism was immediate and apparent. “You want me to help you?”

A wash of insecurity snuck up on him all at once. “It would be a good job. I’d pay for law school. You’d have a generous salary. Benefits. The hours aren’t great, but–”

She spun around, and suddenly they were very close. He had her pinned between his desk and his body, but she didn’t seem to notice–not in the way he did, anyway. Her eyes shone. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll take the job.”

“You will?”

“But first –” A hint of exasperation and delight mingled in her tone. “I need you to tell me why the hell you thought it was a good idea to put your paramilitary headquarters under your own damn house , Bruce.”

Oh, she was so smug. She’d finally won, hadn’t she? She’d confirmed that Bruce Wayne was, indeed, Batman, and now she got to lord it over his head.

Bruce didn’t mind. Not if she kept smiling like that.

“I see. So, you’re not going to stop bullying me now that we’re working together?”

“Stop? Oh, no. It’s going to get worse. So much worse.”

He liked the sound of that.

“Are you ready to start, then?”

“I am,” she said, as confident and sure as she had been from the moment he met her. Despite the blistering lights he set up all around the cave, the work lights that broke through the oppressive darkness here, she outshone them all. “And I know exactly where I want to start.”

“And where is that?” he asked.

She smirked mischievously, and he knew in that moment that this was the beginning of something new. Something exciting. Something like a sunrise over his long, lonely, dark night.

“...I think I know Superman’s secret identity.”

#battinson/reader #battinson imagine #bruce wayne fanfiction #batman day #bruce wayne x oc

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