DC – I am Batman

Her fingers woke him before the light did.

On his ribs. Left side. The bruise from the alley sprint, the dumpster edge he'd caught on the second corner. It hadn't hurt at the time because adrenaline and Julia and then the rest of the night had burned through everything else. It hurt now. Purple going dark at the center, tender at the edges, and her fingertips were mapping the border of it in the gray room with the slow precision of someone who'd done field triage.

He kept his eyes closed for a few seconds. Her fingers pressed, tested, moved a centimeter up. Pressed again. She was palpating the rib underneath, checking the bone through the bruise. Professional. The pressure pattern gave it away, lateral then medial, following the rib's curve, looking for a gap or a give that would mean a fracture.

"Diagnostic or personal?" he said. His voice came out rough. Sleep and the cold room.

"Diagnostic." Her fingers pressed the lower edge and he winced. "Two and three are fine. Four might be cracked."

"It's not cracked."

"You don't know that."

"I know what cracked feels like."

She was quiet for a second. Her fingers stopped pressing. They stayed on his skin, warm, flat, and then the pressure changed. The same hand, the same fingertips, but lighter. Her index finger traced the bruise's edge down along his side, over the ridge of muscle along his oblique, toward his hip. Following the color.

"And now?" he said.

"Personal."

He opened his eyes. The room was gray. The dark getting thinner, the kind of light that promised dawn in another twenty minutes but hadn't committed. She was on her side next to him, propped on one elbow, her hair down and tangled and her face close. No makeup. No sharp edges. Her eyes had the unfocused look of someone who'd been awake for a while and hadn't rushed to fix it.

She kissed him. Slow. Her mouth was warm and soft and tasted like morning and neither of them had brushed their teeth and she kissed him anyway. Her hand slid from his ribs to his stomach and her fingers spread across the muscle there, her palm flat against him, and the warmth of her hand on his skin was doing more than the bruise to wake him up.

He kissed her back. His hand found her hip under the thin blanket. Her skin was sleep-warm and smooth and her hip bone fit against his palm the same way it had last night and his hand already knew the shape.

She pulled back enough to look at him.

"Last one," she said.

"What?"

"Condom. Jacket pocket. Last one."

He reached for the jacket on the floor without sitting up. Found the pocket. One foil packet left. She watched him tear it open and her mouth twitched.

"Planning ahead."

"Alfred packed the jacket."

"Please don't talk about my father while you're putting on a condom."

He rolled her onto her back. She went, her body turning under his hand, the cot protesting under the shift of weight. Her head settled on the flat pillow and her hair spread across the gray fabric and she looked up at him and her eyes were open.

Open and clear and watching him from below.

Last night she'd been above him. On top, setting the pace, riding with her jaw set and her eyes focused and the whole thing had felt like a controlled operation she was executing. From underneath she was different. The same woman but without the leverage, the commanding position. She'd given him her weight and her eyes were open and she was waiting.

He settled over her. His weight on his forearms, his hips between her thighs. She was warm underneath him. The cot was narrow enough that her shoulders nearly touched the edges and her knees came up on either side of his hips. Her ankles hooked behind his back. Pulled him closer. His cock pressed against her and she was wet already, warm, the slick heat of sleep and arousal and whatever had been building while she'd been tracing his bruise in the dark.

He pushed into her.

Slow. She was tighter than last night. Sleep, the different angle, the hours in between. Her body opened around him in degrees, inch by inch, and her eyes stayed open the whole time. Watching his face. Her mouth parted and her breathing went shallow and when he was all the way in she let out a long slow exhale and her ankles tightened behind his back.

"Hi," she said. Quiet.

"Hi."

He started moving. Slow, long strokes, his hips pressing forward and pulling back. Morning-slow, the kind of pace that let him feel every inch of her around him, the drag of her body on the outstroke, the heat of her swallowing him back in on the push. The cot creaked low instead of whining. The sound was almost domestic.

Her hands were on his shoulders. Her fingers spread across the muscle, the same hands that had been diagnostic on his ribs, gripping because she needed to hold something. She was watching him and her face was loose. Jaw relaxed. Mouth soft.

"You look at me like you're memorizing something," she said.

"Occupational hazard."

She laughed. Her stomach flexed under him, her body tightening and releasing with the laugh, and then he shifted the angle down a fraction, his hips dropping, the stroke pressing against the front wall of her, and the laugh stopped. Her mouth stayed open but what came out instead was a sound. Small, quiet, involuntary. Her ankles pulled him deeper and her fingers pressed into his shoulders.

"That's-" She swallowed. "Don't change that."

He didn't change it. Held the angle, kept the pace slow, and on the next stroke she was wetter. The resistance eased, the friction shifting from tight to slick, and the sound between them changed. Quieter than last night's because the pace was slower but present. Wet. Rhythmic. Her pussy clenched around him on every inward stroke and released on every pull back and the cycle of it was building a pulse at the base of his spine.

Her breathing was matching his pace. One exhale per stroke, through her mouth, her chest rising under his. Her heartbeat came through her ribs. Faster than the slow pace warranted.

She moved her hands from his shoulders to his back. Her nails dragged light lines down his spine, her fingertips reading the muscle under his skin the same way they'd read the bruise. His hips stuttered. The sensation went straight from his spine to his cock and the thrust landed harder than he'd planned and she made a sound against his jaw. Short.

"Careful," he said.

"Make me."

He pinned her wrist to the mattress. One hand, light. Her pulse beat under his thumb. She could have broken the hold and she didn't. She looked at his hand on her wrist and then up at his face and her pupils were wide, her lids heavy, and she rolled her hips up against him and the angle drove him deep and her breath came out through her teeth.

"'Nn-" Quiet. Bitten off. Her jaw clenched on it.

Her other hand was free and she used it to pull his face down. The kiss was open and messy and her tongue was warm and she breathed into his mouth and the vibration of the sound she made traveled through his lips. He thrust deeper on the next stroke, pressing in until there was nowhere left, and her back lifted off the cot and her wrist twisted in his grip.

"Ah-" Against his jaw. Her mouth wet on his skin. "Harder."

He gave her harder. The pace still slow but the push at the end deeper. His hips pressing forward until he bottomed out, holding there, letting her feel the depth and the pressure, then pulling back slow and doing it again. She was soaking now. Every stroke slick and loud, the wet sound filling the quiet room, his cock glistening when he pulled back. The sweat was building between their chests. The room was cold but where their bodies pressed together the heat was close and heavy and her skin was damp against his.

Her breathing was coming in catches. Short bursts through her mouth, each one matching a thrust, and the catches were getting closer together. The flush from last night was back across her chest, spreading up her throat, and her eyes were wet at the corners. Still open. Still watching him.

"Bruce." His name in her mouth was different from last night. Slower. More open. Her free hand came up to his face. Her thumb on his cheekbone, holding him there.

His hand opened and released her wrist. Both forearms on the mattress, his weight over her, and she brought her freed hand to his back and pulled him down. Chest to chest. Her breasts pressed flat against him, her nipples hard against his skin, and her heartbeat was hammering into his sternum. She was rocking her hips in small tight circles, grinding up against him, and the friction was direct against her clit with every roll and she was making sounds that were getting smaller.

The getting-smaller was the thing. He'd noticed it last night. When she was close she didn't get louder. The sounds compressed. Tightened. Went inward, like her whole body was pulling toward the center.

The clench around him getting rhythmic, her thighs tightening on either side of his hips. Her breathing shallow and fast against his neck. Her ankles locked harder behind his back, her hips faster in those small grinding circles, and the wet sound between them was constant now, loud in the gray room, and her fingers were digging into the muscle of his back and his own breathing was ragged and his hips were moving on instinct, matching her rhythm, and his cock was deep and the pressure was everywhere.

"Don't stop." Quieter than last night. Her eyes closing now. Finally. Her head pressing back into the pillow, mouth open, throat exposed. The tendons in her neck standing out.

"'Nn- there- right- 'ah-"

He pressed his face against her throat. Her pulse hammered under his lips. Salt and soap. Her body went rigid, thighs and stomach and arms around his back pulling tight, and she came with a shudder that went through her whole body and into his. The sound she made was barely a sound. A catch in her throat, her jaw locked on it, and her fingers dug into his back hard enough to leave marks and her pussy clenched around him in deep rhythmic contractions and each one pulled at him and his control went.

His mouth on her neck. Her pulse under his tongue. He came with his hips pressed tight against her and for a second his head was empty. Just heat and her heartbeat against his chest.

The cot creaked. Settling.

Her chin on his chest. One leg thrown over his. The blanket bunched at their feet because neither had reached for it. The ceiling had a water stain shaped like a boot. He hadn't noticed it last night. Hadn't been looking at ceilings.

Her hair was in his face. He didn't move it.

"Alfred is going to kill us," she said.

"Alfred is going to make tea and never mention it."

She laughed. Her chin dug into his sternum and the vibration went through his ribs and the bruised one ached and he didn't care. She was warm and heavy and the room smelled like sex and laundry detergent from the machines below and the light was changing from gray to pale blue.

"I should have stayed at a hotel."

"You're welcome to leave."

"Shut up." She pressed her face against his chest. Her breath was warm on his skin. Her fingers traced the bite mark on his shoulder from last night. Her own teeth marks, dark purple at the edges. Her thumb ran along the ridge of the bruise.

She pulled her hand back when she caught herself doing it.

He didn't say anything.

A car alarm cycled through its sounds somewhere outside and quit. A pipe in the wall ticked. The laundromat wasn't running yet but the building had its own morning noises, the plumbing waking up, the heater clicking on.

"I'm not leaving," she said. To his chest.

She was faster. Combat-dressed in under two minutes. Boots laced, hair up, Julia Pennyworth reassembled from parts that had been scattered across the safehouse floor. She checked the window, scanning the street with her eyes moving in a pattern that had been trained into her.

"Separate," she said.

"I know."

"Twenty minutes. Different routes." She looked at him. Her mouth was still soft at the corners. Then she set her jaw. "Clean walk. Don't do anything that limps."

"I don't limp."

"Your right side says otherwise."

She left first. The stairs creaked on the third step and the seventh. He heard her boots on the floor below and then the exterior door and then nothing.

He got dressed in the quiet. His ribs ached when he bent for his boots. The bite mark on his shoulder pulled when he shrugged into his jacket. The room was cooling already without her body heat. The cot was a wreck and the pillow still smelled like her hair.

He left the safehouse into the predawn. The air was cold and damp and Gotham smelled like wet asphalt and the first coffee of a diner on the corner. He walked north. His ribs hurt with every step and the bite mark throbbed in time with his pulse and neither hurt in a way that was bad.

A woman was hosing down the sidewalk in front of a dry cleaner's. The water ran over the concrete and into the gutter and carried a candy wrapper with it. She didn't look up. He walked past and the spray misted his ankles.

Alfred was in the kitchen.

"Good morning, Master Bruce."

"Morning, Alfred."

He'd been reading Alfred for sixteen years. The eyes tracked him. His clothes, same ones as yesterday. The mark on his neck that his collar didn't quite cover. The stiffness when he moved, the ribs broadcasting damage with every breath. Alfred read the whole story in two seconds. His face did nothing with the information.

"Breakfast will be ready shortly. Your parents have left for the morning. Your father to the clinic, your mother to a committee meeting."

"Thanks."

He went upstairs. Showered. The water found the bite mark and the scratches on his back from this morning and the bruise found every other drop. He stood under the spray and let the heat soak into the muscle and the ache was everywhere and good. The bite mark was dark in the bathroom mirror. Purple and red, clear teeth impressions. He put on a shirt with a collar.

Julia arrived twenty-two minutes later. The rental car in the driveway. The front door. Her boots on the foyer tile. Then Alfred's voice, level and warm and carefully blank.

"Good morning, Julia. I trust you slept well."

"Very well, thank you."

The dining room. Eggs, toast, fruit, bacon. Julia ate with fork and knife, no wasted motion. The house was quiet with Thomas and Martha gone. Sunlight through the east windows falling across the table in long rectangles.

Alfred came through the kitchen door. He was carrying a cup of coffee. He set it in front of Julia and turned back toward the kitchen without a word.

Julia's fork stopped over her plate.

She looked at the coffee. Black. One sugar. Stirred twice. The spoon still in the saucer from the stirring.

She hadn't told Alfred how she took her coffee. He'd seen her make her own every morning for three days, and she was careful enough to know when someone was in the kitchen with her. Alfred hadn't been. But the coffee was exactly right, and that meant he'd been watching from somewhere she hadn't thought to check, and that meant he'd been paying attention, and that meant it wasn't about coffee.

Her jaw loosened. Her mouth shifted. Her eyes were grey-green, her father's eyes, and for a second they went soft. Then she blinked and picked up the cup.

She drank.

The coffee was perfect.

Alfred's back was visible through the kitchen doorway. Straight. His hands were on the counter, flat and still. His head was bowed a fraction, not enough that anyone would notice unless they'd been reading him for sixteen years.

Julia drank her coffee. He ate his toast. The morning came through the windows and the house was quiet and Alfred stayed in the kitchen and the distance between the kitchen and the dining room was the same distance it had always been.

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