Re: Main Street
She laughed breathlessly too as he mouthed across her jaw. She was blissfully lost in the moment, in the way his eyes filled with desire just before his lips met hers, in the sensation of his hands around her waist and his lips against her skin. It was overwhelming in the best way, and Stephanie wanted it to go on for ages. So, here they were -- The Riddler and Batgirl. Once formidable foes with little more than hatred and rage to spit at each other now tangled together on a rug in front of a fire in a house her Batfamily could call home in another place. It was all rather Hallmark Card, in a twisted sort of way, but in a way far more normal than most of what Gotham had to offer. There were no riddles to solve, no criminals to take down, no Crane poison to combat. Just a girl and a man with feelings they didn’t quite understand finally able to explore what it all meant.
And, she wasn’t quite sure at the moment, but she knew that he made her heart hammer in her chest and her head woozy and her body ache for more. She felt lightheaded, consumed with Eddie and his touch, and she didn’t fight when he laid her on the rug, shifting and arching until she could meet his lips again. His thin frame against hers made her skin feel warm, so warm and lovely, and her arms wrapped around his neck tightly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this, but it hadn’t been any time since she stumbled into this Gotham with the hodgepodge of birds and cats and bats and villains surely.
When he pulled back and looked down on her, she waited for him to speak, already seeing the thoughts rumbling through her mind. Her chest heaved up and down as she tried to catch her breath again, but the way his eyes met hers in that moment made it far more difficult than it should have been. She wanted to say something too, but the words died on her lips just as he reached out to capture a strand of her hair. A soft smile crawled up her lips, and her fingers brushed against his lips and over his cheekbones and all over his face as if tracing a map to memorize for the rest of time. The words still wouldn’t come, and so instead, she reached up to catch his lips again. This time, it was chaste and gentle, but long, as if she was soaking up each precious second.
Eddie- The Riddler didn’t have an innocence. He never did. If the stories were correct, even the Joker had some of that before turning into the clown, but the Riddler wasn’t so lucky. Through his childhood he cheated, stole, lied- anything that would get him ahead of everyone else. His adulthood wasn’t that different and he was such a young man when he first challenged Batman to what would turn into his tiresome life’s work. Gotham made a man expect honesty to be paired with hurt, affection to be meddling and happiness to only appear at the bottom of a vault.
So, when she kissed him like that, all soft affection without the thrill of this being so wrong, he fought back a shiver that she could feel on his lips and fingers. Part of him wanted to run, to say something to make her let him go. He even wished that he had tried to turn this into some long, devious trick so they could go back to an equation of hero and villain that he understood. But, poor Eddie hadn’t built a puzzle death trap over how he felt about her. There wasn’t a switch he could pull to make it come crashing down. And, even if there was, Eddie wondered if he’d disengage the lock anyway.
His hand dragged his hand down her side and lightly grabbed her hip that was pressed up against his. His fingers steadied, holding her as if he finally made the decision that she was more precious than the black, twisted pride she had seen lunge at him in Arkham. It wasn’t gone, it never would be completely, but she made it so insignificant. He ended the kiss slowly, burrowing his forehead in her shoulder as he tried to catch his breath and stop the room from spinning. The warmth of the fire started to fade and blackness shot over them in a sheet of winter chill as snow stretched out from underneath.