Ficlet: This Is Why You Turn to Me (Gotham, Selina, Bruce, teen)
This Is Why You Turn to Me. Gotham. Teen. Selina, Bruce. Selina/Bruce if you squint. 813 words.
Summary: Selina and Bruce have revelations, another favour is asked for and a promise is made.
Author's Note: First drafted as speculation after seeing 2.14 'This Ball of Mud and Meanness'. I don’t think season 2 jossed it. (I haven't seen beyond season 2.)
This Is Why You Turn to Me: shallowness
Selina only realizes she’s been carrying a weight inside of her when it’s gone. The second she sees Bruce, she scans his face, and there’s no killer there. There’s more darkness, more thoughtfulness, and whatever he’s been through with Matches Malone has been tough - tougher than he expected, because he had no idea what it would be like. But he’s stubborn and he had to figure it out for himself, or that’s what Selina told herself when she got him his gun.
He didn’t fire it, though, and she’s lighter, light enough to skim across Gotham’s rooftops.
She controls her face and lets Bruce tell her what happened in words.
“I didn’t kill Matches. He committed suicide.”
“Oh,” she says, trying to get a read on how Bruce is feeling about that. “Were you-?”
“Within hearing distance.” The way Bruce tells it, Selina realizes he’s had to tell a lot of other people too, cops like Jim Gordon who wrote down every word. It’s a factual account, but Selina gets some idea of what it meant to Bruce.
“So?” she asks finally.
“So, I realized a few things. Malone admitted to killing several people. Men, women and children. They all left someone behind.”
“Nearly all,” Selina mutters, because it’s just like Bruce to see himself in all these imagined people ‘left behind’. He sees too much and too little, and she could shout herself hoarse trying to get him to realize it.
“I can help. Somehow. But I need to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“To begin with, what it’s like to live on the streets. No, hear me out,” he says as she starts. Startles, really. Selina wasn’t expecting this, and it mainly seems like a bad idea to her. “I need to see things from street level. I wandered around the Eastside, driven by my belief that I needed to kill my parents’ killer. I was so sure I would find a monster, that it was only when I didn’t that I realized what kind of Gotham I had been traveling through.
“I’ve been focused on my loss, thinking that Wayne Enterprises was my legacy.”
“You kept it personal,” Selina interrupts the speech.
“I was wrong. I need more data, more experiences.”
Sure you do, Selina’s brain mocks. Even when he surprises her, like now, Bruce’s naiveté is huge, even in the way that he admits he doesn’t know enough.
He smiles, and it’s charming, which sets off alarm bells. Selina always notices alarm bells even if she ignores them.
“I have another favor to ask” he says.
*
This favor isn’t for her to hook him up with a gun, but a few hours into Bruce’s great experiment or whatever he’s calling it in his head, Selina is glad she doesn’t have one on her, because she would be training it on him, even if it was empty. Bruce is sincere about this, but it’s clear he’s slumming it.
He looked determined, but his coat and shoes were top dollar and they fit him too well, so they had to go. Then there was the small matter of food. Selina could have got some before, but decided to let Bruce see how it was done.
It’s also been annoying her that he’s so tall. She keeps catching him being an unexpected size out of the corner of her eye. He isn’t the boy she thought he was, and though it’s normal, it’s just a growth spurt, she resents him for it. He isn’t the kid she towed around a year or so ago. He takes up more space.
She’s all too aware of this at the place she lined up for them - a little scuzzier than she’d have picked for just her, but he wants the real deal, so she can stand a little cold and discomfort. Despite its appearance, it’s as safe as anywhere is going to be in Gotham. Selina should have been asleep by now, and yet, here she is, lying down, listening to Bruce breathing.
He breathes really loudly. He’s far too near, except he isn’t, because she took one wall and he took another. But she can sense him being tall and concentrating on not thinking about his comfortable bed in Wayne Manor, because of his new mission. She rolls her eyes at the ceiling.
Selina isn’t thoroughly vindictive, but tonight she decides she’ll make things tough enough that Bruce will come close to forgetting his mission and thinking like a real street kid would - of survival first and everything else a distant second. It won’t stop him being tall and lean and disconcerting, and it won’t really make up for the fact that he keeps asking her to do favors and she always does. But it’ll make it all a little fun.
And he won’t be in any danger, not if she can help it.
Fin
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/323249.html.
Summary: Selina and Bruce have revelations, another favour is asked for and a promise is made.
Author's Note: First drafted as speculation after seeing 2.14 'This Ball of Mud and Meanness'. I don’t think season 2 jossed it. (I haven't seen beyond season 2.)
This Is Why You Turn to Me: shallowness
Selina only realizes she’s been carrying a weight inside of her when it’s gone. The second she sees Bruce, she scans his face, and there’s no killer there. There’s more darkness, more thoughtfulness, and whatever he’s been through with Matches Malone has been tough - tougher than he expected, because he had no idea what it would be like. But he’s stubborn and he had to figure it out for himself, or that’s what Selina told herself when she got him his gun.
He didn’t fire it, though, and she’s lighter, light enough to skim across Gotham’s rooftops.
She controls her face and lets Bruce tell her what happened in words.
“I didn’t kill Matches. He committed suicide.”
“Oh,” she says, trying to get a read on how Bruce is feeling about that. “Were you-?”
“Within hearing distance.” The way Bruce tells it, Selina realizes he’s had to tell a lot of other people too, cops like Jim Gordon who wrote down every word. It’s a factual account, but Selina gets some idea of what it meant to Bruce.
“So?” she asks finally.
“So, I realized a few things. Malone admitted to killing several people. Men, women and children. They all left someone behind.”
“Nearly all,” Selina mutters, because it’s just like Bruce to see himself in all these imagined people ‘left behind’. He sees too much and too little, and she could shout herself hoarse trying to get him to realize it.
“I can help. Somehow. But I need to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“To begin with, what it’s like to live on the streets. No, hear me out,” he says as she starts. Startles, really. Selina wasn’t expecting this, and it mainly seems like a bad idea to her. “I need to see things from street level. I wandered around the Eastside, driven by my belief that I needed to kill my parents’ killer. I was so sure I would find a monster, that it was only when I didn’t that I realized what kind of Gotham I had been traveling through.
“I’ve been focused on my loss, thinking that Wayne Enterprises was my legacy.”
“You kept it personal,” Selina interrupts the speech.
“I was wrong. I need more data, more experiences.”
Sure you do, Selina’s brain mocks. Even when he surprises her, like now, Bruce’s naiveté is huge, even in the way that he admits he doesn’t know enough.
He smiles, and it’s charming, which sets off alarm bells. Selina always notices alarm bells even if she ignores them.
“I have another favor to ask” he says.
*
This favor isn’t for her to hook him up with a gun, but a few hours into Bruce’s great experiment or whatever he’s calling it in his head, Selina is glad she doesn’t have one on her, because she would be training it on him, even if it was empty. Bruce is sincere about this, but it’s clear he’s slumming it.
He looked determined, but his coat and shoes were top dollar and they fit him too well, so they had to go. Then there was the small matter of food. Selina could have got some before, but decided to let Bruce see how it was done.
It’s also been annoying her that he’s so tall. She keeps catching him being an unexpected size out of the corner of her eye. He isn’t the boy she thought he was, and though it’s normal, it’s just a growth spurt, she resents him for it. He isn’t the kid she towed around a year or so ago. He takes up more space.
She’s all too aware of this at the place she lined up for them - a little scuzzier than she’d have picked for just her, but he wants the real deal, so she can stand a little cold and discomfort. Despite its appearance, it’s as safe as anywhere is going to be in Gotham. Selina should have been asleep by now, and yet, here she is, lying down, listening to Bruce breathing.
He breathes really loudly. He’s far too near, except he isn’t, because she took one wall and he took another. But she can sense him being tall and concentrating on not thinking about his comfortable bed in Wayne Manor, because of his new mission. She rolls her eyes at the ceiling.
Selina isn’t thoroughly vindictive, but tonight she decides she’ll make things tough enough that Bruce will come close to forgetting his mission and thinking like a real street kid would - of survival first and everything else a distant second. It won’t stop him being tall and lean and disconcerting, and it won’t really make up for the fact that he keeps asking her to do favors and she always does. But it’ll make it all a little fun.
And he won’t be in any danger, not if she can help it.
Fin
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/323249.html.