Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-22 22:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Luke and Wren
What: Worry and fuzz.
Where: Gardens.
When: After this phone call.
Warnings/Rating: Just the usual with these two angstballs.
Gardens was bright, lit up and active, and coming in through the front door was nothing like using a key to go from kitchen to basement. But Wren didn't know Luke had ever been there before, and she wasn't really thinking very clearly about anything. She knew he'd come back, and she knew they'd talked, but everything else was a blur of exhaustion and the pain pills she was taking just to keep going. But she was worried; she knew that. Even though their conversation was something that wasn't precisely clear, she did know that she was worried about him. And there was guilt. She should have made him stay home. She shouldn't have asked him to come here. Selfish, selfish, and Gus needed him more than she did just then. She could have made it through five more hours of her work shift without seeing him. She could have met him somewhere when he was rested, when Gus wasn't crying anymore and hiding under the bare bunk beds at the safehouse, when the world had stopped tilting on its axis. But, no, she wanted to see him, and she was only now realizing how completely selfish that had been. She'd send him home. Just five minutes, and she'd send him home.
Gardens was, despite everything, a decent place for a dominatrix to work. It wasn't like private clients, and the money wasn't anywhere near as good, but it was busy and no one was allowed to get out of hand - unless they made special arrangements for that kind of thing, since most everything was on the menu, for a price. Wren wasn't scared there, and there wasn't any perpetual fear that someone would hurt her. Even with the recent chaos of the woman who owned the place being arrested, things were running fairly normaly. More clients than usual, the girls said, because of the press, but otherwise it was the kind of place Wren wished she would have found when she was younger. Decent pay and only the violence you signed up for, and there were even places for the girls to sleep. She hadn't taken a room when she'd taken the job, not with Gus at the safehouse (she would never bring him to a place like this, even if she could), but if things didn't work out with Luke, well, it was an option. She'd need a place to sleep once the safehouse was sold, which the realtor told her would be soon - at a great loss, but soon.
The waiting room was lined with appointments, quiet men than didn't meet people's eyes, couples that chatted, and the occasional rowdy bastard. Wren had been checking the time every ten minutes since she'd disconnected with Luke, and the hours passed slow, slow. It was the longest three hours she'd ever experienced, she thought, even though the whole thing was a haze of canes and whips and sweat and moans. Gardens wasn't a bad place, but it was still sex work, and the scent of it was heavy on the air, punctuated and pierced by screams and begging.
And then her client left, and she had five minutes before the receptionist sent her next client back (and she was too scared to ask if Luke had called to cancel). Wren washed up, splashing water on her face and trying to wash the scent of men and sweat from the back of her neck. Her cheeks were flushed, and her grey eyes were bright with fever, and the combination meant that she didn't look immediately sick. She looked flushed and healthy, pink instead of pallor, and it was only the clammy feel of her hands and the burning warmth of the rest of her skin that would give away the fact that she really should be home and in bed. She wore a blood red corset (chosen because it covered any stains that might seep through the bandages hidden beneath it), the kind that was cut low and betrayed what was beneath when she lifted her arm to let the cane fall. Her garters were black, as were her thigh-highs and underwear, and she'd left her stilettos by the door - she couldn't balance in them very well just then.
She heard the door open, and she heard the receptionist usher the client in, heard the woman read off the litany of rules about touching, about violence, about how far things could go after the door closed (which depended on how much he'd paid). Once she heard the door close, Wren walked out of the bathroom and into the nearly-bare room (a plush leather bench, a small table). She was nervous, and it showed in the way she twisted her fingers in front of her, and the way her down-tipped head hid her features in a cascade of pale blonde.
Getting out of Passages was an ordeal in itself. Luke might have downplayed his condition just a little while he talked to Wren, because Bruce had rested for all of half an hour-- maybe an hour at the most, but he hadn’t slept at all, and the trip from Selina’s apartment to the cave had practically worn him down to the point of unconsciousness. Aside from her patch-up job, which was nothing professional, he hadn’t had any medical attention, and his emotional state was practically shattered to pieces. None of that bode well when he crossed, and while Luke had managed to get through the phone call, he kept having to reassure the cab driver that he was ‘fine’ and wasn’t about to fall over dead in the backseat about five different times on the way to the safehouse. His clothes were, at least, clean, albeit rumpled, and at the worst he figured he probably just looked really hungover or possibly strung out.
He told the sitter, who answered the door, that he’d been in an accident and spent the last couple of days in the hospital, which was the exact excuse he’d given to work, even though he was going to have to come up with some kind of proof somehow. But that was a concern for later, not just then, when Luke told her to meet them back at the apartment in a few hours, when he’d leave to meet Wren. They weren’t staying here anymore, he assured her, now that he’d been released, and the sitter nodded and left him to deal with Gus, who--as she’d told him--had been hiding under the bunk beds in the sparsely decorated building quite often lately. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy when Finch came racing to meet him, tail wagging and tongue lolling, but very much alone. The boy was where the sitter said he would be, curled up beneath the bunk bed with his thumb in his mouth, a habit Luke had thought he’d broken, and it killed him to see his son reverting to the way he’d been back when he’d first left the Johnsons. All in all, it took a good half hour or so to coax Gus out from under the bed, and it came with an altered version of the truth; he told the boy that Batman had gotten himself into some trouble, and he’d had to be there to help because they were friends, even though he would have much, much rather been here with him and Wren. That was why he’d been away for so long, he told him, because Batman had a big problem, and he’d had to make sure no one got hurt. From there, of course, he asked questions, and Luke did his best to answer every single one. In the end, Gus seemed mildly appeased, even if he didn’t fully understand why Luke had to be there, or what kind of trouble, exactly, Batman had gotten into. There was still a certain amount of wariness in his gaze, and he sniffled every so often, remnants of his tears, but he took Luke’s hand when he offered it and agreed when asked if he wanted to go back to the apartment and leave this place behind.
The only real hiccup came when Gus asked about Jack. He told him that Jack had stayed behind, because he’d been there too, helping Batman, but only for a little while, and he’d be back soon. Oh, Luke could tell the boy didn’t fully believe him, but there was nothing else he could say, and it was hard enough to fight back tears when he though of what Jack might be like when-- no, if he came back at all. His biggest fear was that he wouldn’t be Jack anymore, not really, because he deserved so much better than that, to live as half a person when he’d already been through so much. But there was no use dwelling on it. All he could do was wait. In the meantime, Luke took Gus and Finch back to his place, and he made dinner, and he tucked the exhausted little boy into bed with the dog curled up at his side. Despite what he’d promised both Wren and Max, he didn’t sleep; he couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Thomas, and Jude, and all those dead men coming for him. He saw Jack as some sort of deranged zombie, hungry for revenge, and so he stayed awake, because he didn’t want to see any of it. Instead he took a shower, and he took some painkillers, even though the bone-deep sense of loss and guilt that spilled over from Bruce made him want to down the whole bottle and chase it with a bottle of vodka. No, just a couple for the pain, and he spent the rest of his time trying to make himself look more like a living, healthy person and less like the walking dead.
Luke had only been to Gardens once, and that had been under the cover of darkness with Spencer, and all he’d seen was the basement. In the daytime, during working hours, he never came to places like this, and he sat in the waiting room with his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans, a loose sweater layered overtop, trying to ignore the sounds coming from the rooms beyond. Even though this was a legal place of business and it wasn’t a whorehouse or anything, he still hated it, and he figured people were probably wondering why the hell the guy with the perpetual scowl hunched over in his chair was even here at all. When the receptionist finally came to fetch him Luke looked up gratefully, seeing it as salvation from the man sitting beside him, who was rambling on nervously about this being his ‘first time’ and having ‘no idea what the hell to ask for’. His appearance earned a strange look, but it was quick, barely there, and he pretended to listen as she rattled off the rules and regulations and whatever else she decided to prattle on about.
Then, finally, she was gone, and he looked up to see Wren come out of the bathroom. Despite the circumstances, despite the way his body still ached, the sight of her made him temporarily tongue-tied, and the thought of other men seeing her like this--even if they couldn’t touch her, even if there was no sex--made him bristle inside. But that didn’t matter just then, and he shoved it aside as he looked at her. He was still pale, though his hair was wet from his shower rather than exertion, and the circles under his eyes were a dull purple now, accentuating the leftover redness in his eyes that came from sporadic bouts of crying. His posture was off, and while all his bruises were hidden by clothing, the fact that he was in pain, even if the pills had kicked in somewhat, was almost visible. Luke took a deep breath, in and out, before approaching, making a very deliberate effort to avoid wincing or limping, which meant he moved rather stiffly, coming to an awkward halt once he was close enough. “Hey,” he whispered, reaching out to find her hands with his and gently tug them apart. He knew, as soon as his fingers curled around hers, that she wasn’t okay, because her hands shouldn’t have felt like that, but he didn’t demand that she see a doctor. Not yet. There was time for that still.
The second she lifted her head, before he'd even finished crossing that space or taking her hands, she knew he'd been lying about being okay. She knew he'd been lying, and Selina had been lying, and everyone she'd talked to in between had been lying. Even without blood or bandages on him, she knew. When they were kids, she'd spent every free moment watching him - when he hadn't been paying attention, when he'd been with his girlfriends, when he'd taught her how to fight or had come to her crying about another girl; she'd watched. Now that she had him back, she was no better. She watched him sleep, and she watched him smile (really smile) with Gus, and she watched him move around the apartment doing tiny, everyday, mundane things. She did it all with the kind of amazement that said she didn't quite believe he was there, hers, someone she could actually reach out and touch now. And maybe it was all obsessive, and maybe it always had been, but it meant that she didn't need to see those purple circles around his bloodshot eyes to know that nothing had been as she'd thought. No, all she needed was for him to take one step forward, that stiff carriage and uneven gait. One step, that was all.
That one realization changed everything. All her own aches and pains were pushed aside, and she tried to focus through the painkillers and the pain. But it was amazing what being scared for someone you loved could do, because her grip was much more sturdy when she turned her hands over in his. MK was forgotten for the moment, the break he didn't think was a break was forgotten. There was nothing but her clammy fingers tugging him toward the leather bench slowly, but insistently. Tug, tug, and come with me, her expression said, too-bright grey eyes worried, oh, so worried. "You need to sit down," she said in French, forgetting herself and falling back on the language of her childhood, the way she always did when she was very, very sick, when it was easier to find the French words than the English ones.
The leather bench was close enough that she sat first, hoping that would encourage him to just slide onto the flat surface beside her. She winced when she sat down, but she didn't even notice. "Did you see-" she began in French, catching herself as her cold thumbs brushed over the inside of his wrists, finding the pulse there and pressing softly. He was alive, she reminded herself. That was all that mattered just then; he was alive. She wondered if she could have lived with this worry for days. If it was better or worse than everyone had concealed it from her. But in the end it didn't matter. Figuring out how hurt he was, that mattered, that was first. She almost wished she could turn back time, take her evening break again and write an even angrier note to Selina, but there was time for that later too.
"Did you see Gus?" she asked, her focus better than it had been on the phone. Having him there in person, mingled with the selfless concern that (unfortunately) defined her where he was concerned, made her much less disjointed in her speech, even her eyes didn't quite focus the way they should when she looked at him. "You didn't sleep," she added, without him needing to tell her. She could see that in his eyes too, that exhaustion, and she hated Bruce right then. She hated him more than she'd ever hated Selina, so much more. One of her icy hands unwound from his, and she pushed a bit of shower-damp hair from his forehead, and maybe she didn't have a right just then. Maybe she shouldn't have touched him until they finished working everything out, but she couldn't help it, not when he looked like he'd cried himself raw, not when he looked so vulnerable. Her fingers were soft along his temple as she sat back, no callouses or rough work and her fingernails painted red to match the corset. This close, she smelled like sex, like sweat, like the cheap lemon shampoo from the safehouse and like blood. "You're going to get up, Luke, and I'm going to put you in a taxi, and you're going to sleep," she said, quiet and without strength, but somehow still insistent, the worry in it giving the order backing it didn't have in volume alone.
In the next room, someone moaned, and she closed her eyes and tried to shut it out. "Promise me," she told him, because she knew he'd argue, she knew it. Her fingers found his lips, an attempt to silence any protest he might make. "Please?" she asked, because right then, she was scared. She hadn't been expecting this, and she was scared. "And a doctor. You need to see a doctor. Adam," she suggested.
In Luke’s mind, he hadn’t lied. Not really. The physical pain was bearable, despite what his reactions might have indicated, but the bleeding effect between Bruce and himself was what hurt more than any ache imaginable. He’d had worse injuries, been in worse shape. This was manageable. It was just fact, really, that he could handle more than the average person could. He knew, though, just by looking at her, that she wasn’t going to see it that way, but he allowed her to tug him towards the bench nonetheless. “Don’t understand French,” he said, a reminder as he followed, but foreign language or not, he understood the gist of what she was saying. She might not have noticed that she winced, but he definitely did, and there was no chance whatsoever of him putting his own needs above hers, especially when he didn’t think he had any needs in the first place. In contrast, his expression didn’t flicker as he sat beside her, though it took a little maneuvering to ease himself onto the bench without giving some sort of reaction. Once he settled, though, it wasn’t so bad, and he looked down as her thumbs brushed across his wrists. As cold as her touch was, it was real, not a hallucination or a nightmare, and he wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world just then.
“Yeah, I saw Gus.” Despite everything he managed a smile, weak as it was, though it faded a moment later. “I wish I could say he was fine,” he admitted, “but I-- I’m not sure. It’s not fair to him, all this. He ate dinner, though, and he stopped crying and fell asleep, so I guess that’s something.” Fortunately, Luke hadn’t had any intention of lying to her about his lack of sleep, and it was probably a good thing that she didn’t vocalize her hatred for Bruce just then. Not that he didn’t share in it, but he was precariously balanced between being wholly himself and feeling what the other man did, and the amount of guilt he possessed was enough to drive anyone to find some way to just make it stop. “I know. I tried, but I-- I just couldn’t,” he sighed. As far as he was concerned, she had every right to touch him, and he leaned into her hand as she brushed back his hair, a small whimper at the contact escaping his lips. He craved it, almost, simple touch, and he didn’t want her to stop. It didn’t matter that she smelled like times he’d thought were long since put behind them, or that there was moaning coming from next door; for a brief, blissful second, there was just the two of them, and the feel of her fingers against his temple.
But then the lull was broken when she spoke, and Luke sat up a touch too sharply to look at her. “Like hell I am.” Oh, he wasn’t going anywhere. Not without her, at least. Not even the feel of her fingers on his lips was enough to stop him. “I can sleep later. I can see a doctor later. I’m fine, Wren. I’m not bleeding, and nothing’s broken, and I’m not sick. You are,” he insisted, bringing a hand to her cheek. “You’re burning up. You need a doctor. Those stitches-- Selina was supposed to come back and fix them. They need to be looked at. You get yourself taken care of, and then you come back to the apartment, and we’ll both get some sleep.” He might have been tired, and he might have been in pain, but he was still as stubborn as ever when it came to her and her well-being.
She noticed how hard it was for him to sit, the maneuvering and that stoicism in not letting her know how badly he was hurting. It didn't ease her worry at all, but his presence there was soothing. Even hurt, he was something solid, someone she trusted, the one person she trusted more than anything, even with all the things that had happened and gone wrong. She smiled the tiniest bit when he said he didn't understand French, and she would have been content to sit there for the entire hour and just touch his face in quiet. "I want to do that," she said, thinking aloud, too gone with fever and pills to realize she'd even spoken. He was a port in the storm, but he'd always been, even before he'd been hers. "Even if you're not mine, don't go," she said, thinking less before speaking now that he was there, that the uncertainty of the past few days was beginning to ebb away and leave worry and exhaustion behind. There was nothing but that room for her just then, not the sounds beyond and not the next client in fifty minutes. There was just him, and even if he wasn't hers, even if he made that choice, she couldn't bear the thought of him not being there, here, somewhere she could touch. "It was like that before," she reasoned, more thoughts made words without her true understanding, and all of it muttered and hard to comprehend.
His mention of Gus brought her back to reality, to stark cold walls and the unforgiving ache in her belly. "When I came back, he wouldn't eat. He said he thought we'd all gone away, and he wanted to know what happened to him if we didn't come back one day," she admitted, eyes going damp and tears brimming over onto her cheeks. "If he fell asleep in bed, without crying, then you did a really good job," she said, because she'd had a hard time with that. "I've been working a lot, and I haven't been home much the past few days, and I don't think it helped. And Thierry was nice at the funeral, but I think the trip wasn't a good idea. I thought it might be, but it made him remember the Johnsons, and I couldn't carry him, and there was a lot of walking." She went quiet then, realizing she'd been babbling, and he'd just confessed to not sleeping, right? That dragged her focus in again, but the quiet whimper when she brushed back his hair sounded like ache and heaven, and she just wanted more of it. No, but he needed to rest. She knew he needed to rest. And her hand was already dropping away when he sat up quickly.
It took her a second to realize what he was saying he wouldn't do. "Don't move so fast like that," she said, her cold hands gripping his biceps to keep him still, belatedly and with no real strength. "I have five other appointments," she told him, even as she rubbed her cheek against his hand. She shouldn't do that, she knew. They should talk, she knew. But his touch felt so solid, and all she wanted to do was forget the past week entirely. "I didn't let Selina go back through when she wanted to," she admitted, and she thought she might be repeating herself, but it was so hard to tell just then. She dragged open eyes that had drifted shut while she rubbed her cheek against his palm, and she did try to listen to what he was saying. It sounded like partial agreement, like he was willing to go back to the apartment alone if she just agreed to get looked at, and maybe that was okay. "You go home- back to the apartment, and I'll find a clinic once I'm done here," she offered, though she really didn't know where to go. She wasn't going to file a police report, and even she knew that there was no way the police wouldn't be called. "I just need some sleep," she amended. "If I rest, it'll be okay. After these, I don't have any more appointments until tomorrow night," she said, hoping that would make it better. Her fingers dropped to slip between his, and she watched the touch with unfocused, greedy eyes, and then she looked back up at him. "I'm worried about you. I want you to sleep." There was something haunted in his eyes, some conflict she wasn't used to seeing there, and she just wanted to take it away for him if she could, and sleep was the best thing she could think of.
For a moment, Luke thought he’d missed something. Maybe the painkillers had started working a little too well, beyond turning the pain into a dull rhythmic ache and made the world a touch hazier than it usually was. “Want to what?” His voice was quiet, unconcerned since he simply assumed he was tuning things out, but then she spoke again, and this time he was sure there hadn’t been some faulty thread of communication. For the most part, he was aware of what was going on, and a touch of worry seeped into his gaze as the realization that she might be worse than he’d thought began to dawn on him. “I am yours,” he assured her. “Always. You know that. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” Even if she didn’t know what she was saying, and this was forgotten once the fever went down, he couldn’t help saying it anyway. By the time she started going on about something being like it was before he realized she wasn’t fully articulate, and he didn’t bother asking what was like before. He just shifted closer and remained quiet, figuring it was better than questioning things she probably wasn’t aware she was saying.
Her feverish rambling was much, much preferable to reality, and he closed his eyes when she described how Gus had thought they’d left him, and the little boy’s fear of his own fate should he be abandoned for good. All things he’d never wanted his son to feel, and he’d failed to keep that nightmare from becoming reality. “We can’t keep leaving him like this,” he whispered, and the pain in his voice had absolutely nothing to do with physical injuries. He forced his eyes open, but he felt dry, raw, and there were no tears left to shed. “I know-- I know I don’t mean to, and I know you don’t mean to, but it has to stop. They have to understand that. Gus is so young, and he-- he deserves better.” A heavy swallow, and he shook his head. “I told him Batman got into some pretty big trouble, and I had to help. I-- I don’t think he gets it, and I think he stopped trying because he was tired, and I don’t-- I told him Jack would be back soon, but I don’t know if he will be,” he admitted, and for a second he looked very, very young, full of fear for a friend whose fate was still agonizingly unknown. “Funeral? What funeral? Where’d you go?” He could vaguely recall some mention of it when they’d spoken over the phone, but he couldn’t remember details, and personally he didn’t think Gus being reminded of the Johnsons was something he’d needed under the circumstances.
He shrugged off her hands, not caring about fast movements and the way his muscles screamed in protest. “Five more appointments,” he repeated, even as she rubbed her cheek against his hand, and he moved his fingers reflexively, liking the motion of skin against skin. Five might as well have been a million in his mind. “I’m not leaving, Wren. No. Either I wait until your appointments are done and I take you to a doctor, someone who won’t ask questions, or we go right now. You’re sick. You shouldn’t be working at all.” He was already considering making a scene, and threatening to sue for unsafe work environments or something of the like. Maybe forced labour while she was unwell. “Listen, you need more than sleep. Please. I know you’re worried about me, but I’m worried about you too,” he insisted. “Come with me, get some medical attention, please, and then we can go home.” He tugged on her fingers, a silent plea. For her, he wasn’t above begging.
It was that shift closer that grabbed her attention and pulled her out of her thoughts, and she realized he'd spoken a few seconds after he had, remembering the words and letting them warm her through. She knew neither of them should be making promises right then, commitments or confessions, but she couldn't help the small, shy smile that touched her lips once she belatedly realized what he said. And he was closer. Just there, and so near that she could just reach out and touch him if she wanted to. She wanted to offer things, which she always did when she was feeling uncertain about their relationship. To offer things to keep him, while still letting him have anything else he wanted. It always seemed the easier thing, to have some of him than none of him. "Say it again?" she asked, which wasn't what she'd intended to say at all. It was a begged thing, pleading and needy. She knew that was the opposite of what she wanted to be for him, but it came out anyway, the plea.
And it was all replaced with his explanations of Gus' state, which made her sit up straighter with a wince. "I know," she admitted, all those feelings of being a bad mother flooding back in. She'd already failed Gus so much, so many times. "I finally got Selina to understand, but this time-" She gave a small, helpless shrug. "I let her go through, and I gave her a note, but I understand this time. I sent her through to get you, and I don't blame her for not coming back until she knew you were okay. Gus- He wouldn't be able to stand losing you. She was right not to come back until you were safe this time," she said, and it felt strange to absolve Selina of wrongdoing, but there it was, just this once. No, all the blame was for Bruce, and even Selina's pleading on his behalf hadn't made Wren feel any more inclined to forgive him. It was only the fever that kept her voice temperate and still, because she didn't feel that way at all on the inside. "I heard that Jason is fine, which means Jack should be fine, right?" she asked, not knowing anything about Lazarus Pits or anyone dying; Selina had left that part out. She didn't like that boyish fear on his face. It reminded her of Seattle, before the anger of New York, and she touched her cold fingers to his cheek. Her eyes went unfocused when he asked about the funeral, because she couldn't remember for a second. "Oh, Thierry's father died. We flew up for the day."
It took her even a second longer to realize that he'd shrugged off her hands. "I just started a few days ago. They'll fire me, and I thought I could live here, if you- If things didn't- If MK-" She shook her head, no, no, no, because she couldn't manage to get the words out. "I'm selling the safehouse, but that money needs to go to pay something off for you and Gus, somewhere quiet where he'll feel safe," she added, because she'd been thinking about that while wielding the whip with her last client. "You can't stay here five hours, not feeling the way you do," she argued, fighting to keep her focus, because this was more important than anything else. She raised both of her hands, the movement making the corset top slide obscenely low and making the smell of blood encircle them. She brought her fingers to his cheeks, her thumbs brushing worried lines beneath his eyes, over those purple bruises that told the truth of what he had been through. She couldn't put him through five hours here, listening and knowing what was happening once he left the room and the door closed. Her eyes shuttered for a second, and she tipped her head as she opened them again. "Promise you'll get looked at too?" she asked, because she knew he was minimizing for her benefit, she knew it. She intended to leave it there, but she couldn't help the tiny question that followed, one word and nearly a whisper. "Home?"
Her smile was, in the grand scheme of things, so insignificant, yet it made him feel like maybe there was still something worse salvaging in his life. Bruce’s life might have been a disaster, but his didn’t have to be, not now that he was here to fix things, and that hope made all the difference. He’d thought it had been lost, but maybe it took someone else’s mistakes to make him realize it hadn’t been. “I’m yours,” he repeated, and even though the warmth of her body came from fever and a likely infection, it was still heady when he was this close. “I’ve always been yours, Wren, and I always will be. Nothing will ever change that, no matter how-- how bad it seems, it won’t. It never does. You have to see that.” He stopped just short of becoming desperate, because this wasn’t the time, really, not when he was full of pills and she was burning up more and more with each passing second. Once they were both steadier, more stable, they could talk properly, and he’d make her see that he still wanted her one way or another. He had some ideas, fuzzy and half-formed as they were.
While Luke had blamed Selina for a lot in the past, he acknowledged that in this, there was really nothing to be angry at her for. She hadn’t lied, hadn’t hidden important things from him, and if she hadn’t found Bruce when she did, he would have undoubtedly killed a lot more people. Maybe, at some point, he would have progressed from criminals to innocent bystanders, and maybe in the end it would have been a hail of police bullets that finally took him down. “This isn’t your fault,” he told her. “It’s not Selina’s either. Who knows what would’ve happened if she hadn’t gone after Bruce. He did this. He brought this down on all of us, and I-- I hate him for it. Maybe I get why he did it, but that doesn’t matter. I trusted him. I trusted him, and I-- because of him, I could have--” He broke off, shaking his head, and took a deep, steadying breath to stop his hands from shaking. All that anger was dangerous, and combined with how Bruce was feeling, it was just a disaster waiting to happen. He needed to calm down, and he needed to stay that way; maybe there were pills for that too. As for Jack, he had no idea how to tell her the truth, how to tell her about Jason, and he looked at her for a long moment without being able to find the right words. “Jason is... he’s fine now,” he began, his voice cracking. “But something-- something happened, and I don’t know-- I don’t know how it’s going to affect Jack. I think we just have to wait until he crosses, and see then. I told him it was going to be okay,” he added mournfully. “He was afraid, I think, of what might happen, and I-- I told him we’d fix it.” Oh, he hadn’t intentionally lied, of course. He really had believed that Bruce would take care of everything, but his faith had obviously been misplaced. “Thierry’s father,” he repeated, almost thoughtfully. “Oh.” It didn’t really register, not then, but funerals weren’t exactly the best places for little kids. Wren had probably meant well, but it didn’t surprise him that Gus hadn’t reacted well.
“They can’t fire you for being sick, Wren,” he began, but then she started talking about living here, in this place, and that effectively cut through whatever haze the painkillers had begun to bring with them. He shook his head emphatically, bringing his fingers to her lips to shush her despite her not being able to get the words out. “No. No, you’re not living here. You don’t have to live here. You’re coming back to live with me, you and Gus, so don’t, okay? Please, don’t.” He frowned when she mentioned selling the safehouse, because he knew how much that had meant to her. All because he hadn’t been here; Bruce’s fault again. “But you can’t sell it,” he protested. “I don’t need the money. We can find somewhere else without you selling it, we can. You shouldn’t have to do that.” Maybe she was right, and staying here for five hours was a bad idea, but he was stubborn, and if he took some more painkillers he’d be fine. He could handle it. The smell of blood made him look down, and he wondered what the slice looked like, whether or not it was still bleeding, and he probably would have tried removing the corset himself to see if he hadn’t feared it would do more harm than good. He forced his gaze back upward as her thumbs brushed beneath his eyes, and he brought his hands to her wrists and held on. “I can if I have to,” he insisted stubbornly. “I can stay here for however long it takes.” Seeing a doctor wasn’t high on his priority list, but he nodded anyway, willing to do whatever necessary to get her some help. “If you go, I’ll go,” he promised, and his expression softened at that single whisper, home, a word that hadn’t had any meaning until they’d found each other again. “Yeah, home. Wherever you and Gus are, whether it’s the apartment or somewhere else.”
The repetition, that I'm yours made her calm in ways she wasn't even aware of. Her foot, previously tapping on the floor beside the bench, slowed. Her breathing evened, and she stopped biting her lip. She wasn't cognizant enough to really recognize the promise as something tangible, something that could maybe be held onto after this, but it was soothing all the same. "When we were small," she said, her fond smile something far away and not there at all, lost in the past and the way things had been, "I would lie in bed and try to imagine you saying things like that, but I Imagined a lot more stammering," she admitted with a smile, her overly bright grey eyes going hopelessly damp. And they'd skipped all that anyway. They'd slept together before they ever managed to find words for anything, and she wondered - in her fever - if she'd ruined everything that way. "I wish things could have been more normal for you. Us, I mean, back then." she tried to clarify inarticulately.
While she wasn't surprised to have him absolve her of blame, she was surprised to hear him absolve Selina of the same. Everyone had downplayed it all to her, what had happened. No one had told her how close he'd come to being gunned down, how amazingly lucky they both were that he had made it through at all. She believed what Selina said, what Dick said, and she believed what she saw with her own eyes. He was hurt, and he was tired, but he wasn't dying, and she didn't realize how close it had been. Well, not until just then. "You could have hurt someone," she filled in, finishing his sentence, but there was more to it than that, wasn't there? "Selina said it was fine, that it was no big deal. She lied, didn't she?" she asked, realization settling in, mirroring itself in the fear that was quickly taking over her expression. "How bad was it? How in danger were you? How- How close?" she asked, and the word close was a strangled, cut off thing. It felt like New York, like all those nights spent waiting by a window, and it felt like the fear that had engulfed her when Spencer said he knew him, when she'd thought he was still doing it here, still risking his life here. That anger on his face, that reminded her of the days surrounding her leaving five years ago, and she wrung her fingers and tugged on the garter straps without thinking, needing something to do with her hands. The confession about Jason - about Jack - mingled with all that fear, and she tugged so hard that one one of the snaps tore through her stocking. She started to rock, just the tiniest bit, almost imperceptible. She needed to breathe, she just needed to breathe. "He killed someone here. The police were following him," she said of Jack, because she had no idea how Jack was going to keep from going to jail, even if he was okay. But Luke's guilt was more important than that, and she shook her head and tugged at his fingers a moment. "No, this isn't your fault. Not fixing Jack in time isn't your fault. They need to tell us more, all of them over there. They can't do this again. It isn't your fault. It isn't, Luke," she said, and she repeated it again and again, hoping the repetition would make him believe it, make it feel true.
The fingers on her lips did silence her for a second, unexpected and strong, even when he was falling apart before her eyes. She just shook her head about not selling the safehouse, about not living here. Those things weren't important just then. Clarifying was important, because more than anything she wanted to get him somewhere safe and looked at, especially after the realization that he might be hurt and just might not know it. If she'd realized how close it had been before, she wouldn't have even let him waste time coming here. But it was too late for that, too late for anything but making sure he was okay. His fingers on her wrists a second laster, combined with that stubborn touch to her voice, made her smile a sad-fond smile. "I meant we'll go now," she said. "There's a doctor the working girls go to. He won't say anything," she said, forcing herself to focus on solutions, on things she could do something about. It helped her fight off the blurry edges of the fever. She tugged her fingers free from his, and she pulled the remaining garter snaps free. With a little wince, she managed to roll the stockings down a second later, but the corset she couldn't do alone. She turned her back to him, just a swivel of hips on the bench, and she pulled her blonde hair over her shoulder. "Can you undo me?" she asked. The corset wasn't tight, because she couldn't handle the pressure against her stomach, but the ties were laced from top to bottom along skin flushed red with fever, and it would take longer if she had to undo them herself. "Please?"
There was only a thread of disappointment, quickly tucked away, when she smiled, because he recognized the distance in the fondness he saw there, and the tone of her voice as she spoke. She wasn’t here, not really, which he blamed on the fever, but there was nothing he could do to change that now. As badly as Luke wanted to fix things, now simply wasn’t the right time. “I probably would have stammered back then,” he admitted. “And turned bright red.” He managed a small smile, full of nostalgia, but it faded as he thought about why he hadn’t told her all the things he seemed to be forced to repeat over and over now when they were younger. “I guess... I guess I thought you knew. Even if I didn’t say it, I thought you knew how much you meant to me. I should have told you,” he added with a frown. He should have known better, especially since Thomas had never been vocal about how he felt, and Max’s reassurances that he did care and it went without saying had never, ever been enough. “I wish they could have been too, but I still wouldn’t change it. Like you said once, I think... that if things had been different, we might not be here now. Or something. I can’t remember. But you’re here, and I’m here, and we’re together,” he said, ignoring the mess about them being on a break and her fears about MK, because they didn’t matter, and they weren’t important.
He’d realized, by the things she said, that Selina had severely downplayed the situation. Part of him was grateful for it, but at the same time he didn’t like lying to her, especially when it was face-to-face, and he hesitated when she asked how bad it had been. “It-- it wasn’t good, Wren,” he began hesitantly. “I got lucky on this side, I didn’t hurt anyone. But Bruce-- he killed people, and the cops were after him, and I don’t-- I don’t know if he would have kept on killing criminals, or gone on to civilians at some point. Maybe even the cops. I don’t know, because he was stopped before then, and it was fine,” he reassured her. “He didn’t get shot. He didn’t get hurt, not really. I’m just sore, that’s all. It’s-- it’s kind of hard to remember, because when we think back, we... remember things that weren’t real. Things no one else saw, you know?” He shook his head. “Listen, it’s fine now, and it won’t happen again, because like hell am I going to let it. Things are going to be different from now on,” he insisted, heated, but his expression changed when she tried to convince him what happened to Jack wasn’t his fault. “I know. I know he didn’t tell me, and I couldn’t have stopped it without knowing, but-- Jack asked, he was afraid, and I told him it would be fine. And... and it wasn’t. If he killed someone here, that’s bad, really bad, and I don’t know when or if he’s coming back, and it’s not fair.” He almost sobbed with the frustration of the situation, stopping himself just in time, and he took a deep, shaky breath instead. “He does so much for us. He’s helped me, and I didn’t help him this time, when he needed it. I could have done something. Bruce could have, if he hadn’t been so stupid,” he said, mostly to himself, the anger rising in his voice all over again. With the mood he was currently in, hell would freeze over before he’d send that idiot back through the door.
But then it disappeared again, that anger, when she said they could go to a doctor now. He blinked at her in surprise, not having expected it to be so easy, before he smiled, all youthful relief that she was agreeing to let herself be taken care of. “Oh. Okay, good. So we’ll go to this doctor, and then we’ll go home, and you’ll be okay,” he said decisively, and that simplicity came from the painkillers, like it was so easy to just make everything better. He watched as she pulled the garter snaps free and rolled down her stockings, and despite the circumstances he couldn’t help a small smile when she asked him to unlace her, the request reminding him of something from years and years ago, except he was pretty sure she’d asked him to lace her up then, not the opposite. “Okay,” he agreed, and while he tried to work quickly at first, he realized almost right away that only made his fingers clumsy and awkward. Instead he slowed down, undoing the laces bit by bit, almost lulled by the repetition of the task. Eventually he reached the end, unlacing the last tie, though he didn’t immediately pull back. He lingered, fingers brushing absently over heated skin, and on impulse he leaned forward and brought his lips to her shoulder, just for a moment, before sitting back with an almost shy, quiet cough. “All done.”