addy and steph are the (blondebat) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-29 10:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: dc comics, riddler, stephanie brown |
who Eddie and Steph (Part One of Two)
what talking about muerte's plottin to get them back together.
when after this
where the shared bunker.
warning the usual with these kids: angst and cuteness.
The latch to the hidden bunker Eddie and Stephanie had been sharing clicked open quietly. The little riddled man with his big brown eyes and swooping dark hair looked inside cautiously, finding no one at the computer as he expected and the Batgirl costume hung up where Stephanie had last left it. He wasn’t prepared for the worst, but he knew to be cautious of just what Muerte had told Stephanie and what she might have said back. Eddie was still reeling from questions raised by what the women meant when they said fix, time and death. All three words forming together like some kind of stopwatch counting down the seconds he had left to convince Stephanie that they could still work if they just tried. And, while most of him really believed that she was invested as much as he was, Muerte awoke a needling fear that told him that his blonde bat was looking for a way out. She had seen the broken jawed monster he used to be still swirling around in those dark eyes and she wanted out, out, out.
Slipping into the bunker and slowly closing the door behind him, Eddie took off his green Riddler jacket, the tie around his neck and kicked his shoes off like a child exhausted and relieved to escape a morning at Sunday mass. There were two rooms, first the workspace that had a couple tables with his gadgets, shelves, cabinets and drawers full of things and a giant computer with dual monitors. The second room was a simple bedroom. Small enough that the queen sized bed almost touched the walls and barely with enough space for a lamp at the end of it. Unbuttoning his shirt, slipping off his belt and stripping down to just an undershirt and his taco themed boxers in a trail of clothing, he opened the bedroom door and muttered a cautious, “Hey baby.”
Before she could respond, he was crawling under the covers, past her feet and up her body, meticulously making sure not to poke any bruises or injuries that he knew about. He wrapped his arms around her stomach, right over her bellybutton and burrowed under the blankets. “Muerte read you her last will and testament?” He asked, voice muffled by the covers he was hiding under. “She told me some things. Upsetting things. Things that made me riddle back.” Eddie admitted, kissing whatever skin he could find before clinging to her body.
Oh, Muerte had read Stephanie her last will and testament alright, had rained that particular brand of twisted guilt and frustration on the her, and the blonde bat was worse for wear. No, she wasn’t Muerte’s biggest fan at the moment, not by a long shot. The terminally ill, the parents of the young children whose lives were taken too soon, victims of circumstances might all hate Death as a thing in their lives, but Stephanie hated that physical manifestation more than any of them combined. The spiteful, selfish, manipulative manifestation who held Stephanie’s heart in her grasp and stopped it with no effort at all. One second beating, then the next seized up just because Steph had the gall to step up for her relationship. She knew, objectively, that if Death wanted her dead, well, she would be dead. That wasn’t the point, though. The point was that she’d done it, and no apology would take the anger away.
So, yeah, she wasn’t impressed with the letter Muerte had left her in the journals, and she stared at it for a long while, cursor on her tablet phone just blinking as if emphasizing how confused Steph felt about the entire thing. She was alone in the bunker after another round of patrolling and supply-slinging, and she wasn’t in the mood to feel that kind of anger. She was so exhausted from it already and so fed up with the feeling boiling inside of her. Part of it, too, was the sting from Eddie’s forgiveness, too, something that never quite left the back of her mind the way she wanted it to. No, every second she remembered the pain of it, and it made it hard sometimes to be around him, but she was trying. She was trying to get over it, or at least move on from it and the other litany of problems weighing down on their relationship.
But, the idea that Muerte had pushed Eddie to forgive what happened in Wayne Manor in the first place? It didn’t comfort her at all. It scared her. What if the omnipresent being had her little strings tugging Eddie around like a puppet to fulfill some sort of sick pleasure? If it was true, what was real? Was any of it real at all? The thought had her head spinning, but in a different way. She nearly broke the goddamn tablet, punched a hole in a wall (she had to ice her fist for a while), and then simply crawl into bed with the door closed and the lights off. If their entire relationship was a lie, oh god, Stephanie didn’t know what she would do. Every single person would be right, and she didn’t even want to stomach that possibility. She couldn’t even consider it because her chest hurt in a strangling sort of way when she did. And, by the time Eddie opened the bunker, she had burrowed on the bed in the dark for more than an hour, trying her best to quell the anger and sadness and utter panic that none of this was real.
She didn’t stir when he first stepped into the bunker, nor when he appeared at the bedroom door in his boxers and t-shirt. Not even as he slithered his way up her body and into the bed. She grunted, simply, with a nod when he spoke, but her fingers moved to tangle with his near her belly button, tugging hard before settling within that entanglement. Trying to make sure his arms didn’t rest on her healing rib (which was finally on the mend and would be healed if she would only be smart about it) though she hissed when he got close enough. She was clearly ready for bed, too, laying there in one of Eddie’s math joke t-shirts (one of those rational/imaginary numbers deals) and her underwear, shorts discarded somewhere within the tangle of blankets. “What did she say?” she asked quietly, tugging on his fingers again before brushing her thumb across the back of his hand.
Eddie could feel the tension in her body, which made him cling to her a little harder for a couple seconds of dull, crushing pain. His grip loosened and returned a light drape of his arm over her stomach and he sighed into the mattress loudly. Defeated. Even though she hadn’t pushed him away and forced him to lay on his own side of the bed, he could practically taste the poison that bubbled up from her conversation with Muerte. He could guess what they said to each other and even Stephanie’s fury afterwards, but Eddie still wanted to know the details of it. He needed to know what she said about him like some kind of goddamned middle man that neither of them asked for.
When Muerte pushed it turned him into a riddling mess. Stephanie though? It probably turned her brutally honest. So, if what his concept of a friend said was right, he and the blonde bat were far more doomed than he thought. It wasn’t like Eddie had some delusional belief that everything was perfect now. He knew being in a real relationship with Stephanie would be difficult and the fights could last them their whole lives. That didn’t matter because Stephanie made him happy. More than that, he really and honestly believed they were better for it. The plague, the pit, Vegas, her father and their twisted pasts tried to pull them apart and instead it made them understand each other all the better. He had to believe she wanted to fight for it as much as he did.
“She told me we are trying to fix things. You and I. She told me you said it’s not working.” Eddie said finally, still under the covers and reaching to intertwine his fingers with hers tightly. There was pain in his voice without the anger that he had long put to rest since their night together at the church. And, he sounded lost. Like something in the game changed without telling him and there wasn’t enough time to recover from it. A moment passed in the dark bedroom and then he whispered, “I know we aren’t there yet. I didn’t know you wanted to give up trying. You should have told me.”
When he crushed her in an embrace, she hissed again, choking out his name in a harsh whisper until he relented. It didn’t hurt as much as she insisted, more took her off guard when she wanted to be in control of their relationship at the moment. After all, if it was all fake, if what Eddie felt was little more than an extension of whatever manipulation Muerte fancied, Steph wanted to take back a little bit of power. Her shoulders stiffened just a little as he rested his arm lightly across her waist, and she rolled her chin to rest on the tense muscles to look at him for a second before dropping her head down again to dig her nose into the fluffy pillow her head rested on with a sigh of her own. She reached up their entwined hands, pulled them out from under the covers, and brushed her lips against the back of his hand. She held his hand there against his lips, pressure mounting, as he spoke. Stupidly shocked to hear the words coming out of his mouth.
“Wha--what?” She ripped her fingers out of his, pulling the covers over her head and rolling over on her side to face him, shifting down until the outline of his nose lined up with hers in the dark. She couldn’t see his face, not perfectly, but she just knew what he looked like. Frowning, dark brown eyes wide, and hurt. Oh, so hurt. And, Stephanie was hurt, too. Why would Muerte say something like that? If Death was all-knowing, she would know how much bullshit that was. Steph wanted to try; of course she did. “Are you kidding me?” she murmured, warm breath tickling his cheek and mouth. “I never said I didn’t want to try. I would never, ever say that. Why would I be here if I did?”
It was all whisper-quiet, as if the darkness surrounding them would swallow her words if she spoke them any louder. As if they were sharing secrets in that dark bedroom that no one else in the world deserved to hear. “I told her--I said what I’ve said to you.” She reached forward until her fingers brushed against his throat where earlier in the night some man had tried to strangle the life out of him. “We’re damaged. You know it, I know it. And trying to fix us is going to be hard. And it’s not just what she did, either. There’s so many things messing with us.” Her voice, still low, was growing more and more sharp. Who did Muerte think she was to twist her words like that? “And I told her that. That I am trying, that we’re trying, but it isn’t something that happens with a snap of our fingers. Goddammit, why would she say that? I never said I didn’t want to try. I want to try, I want to try.” Her fingers dug into his neck as she breathed out her desperate words. Feeling like a child hiding under the blankets.
He searched through the darkness for something he recognized and watched the outline of her cheeks rise and fall when she talked. Eddie made a noise like he just set down something heavy mixed with relief even if there was still tension hanging there between them. “Tell me you think it’s going to be okay. Not now, not even for a while. I can understand that.” He scooted closer, forehead against hers as he closed his big, dark eyes and exhaled slowly. There was something about whispering under the covers in the tiny, dark room that made him feel safe. That for once there was something happening between them that didn’t involve anyone else. Not Muerte, not her father, not the Bat family, not the rogues. Just them. And, the grip on the back of his neck and the desperation in her voice mirrored a part of him that couldn’t fathom being rejected because he made too many mistakes. He didn’t need Stephanie the way he used to like some kind of emotional crutch to keep him from spiraling, but god he wanted her. Hell, he was devoted to her in a way he didn’t think he could be capable of.
“I can’t be the only one who believes in us. I can’t do it.” Eddie whispered, touching her face with a couple rough brushes of his thumb across her cheek and then he rolled to lay on his back, knees up to create a makeshift tent that gave them room to breathe. “Muerte acted like she knew we were doomed. That she ruined us for good. No. No. I won’t, I refuse to believe it’s that easy. We’re too intertwined for it to be that easy.” And, finally there was some anger, but it wasn’t directed at Stephanie. He didn’t like anyone trying to dissect or understand what he had with Stephanie. He thought it was a mystery that no one else except them could know the answer to.
With him so close, with his forehead against hers and his breath warming her cheeks and chin, she wanted to be able to lie to him and tell him it would all be fine. That there was a light at the end of the tunnel beckoning them forward. That, at the end of it all, things would be alright. In that moment, as she clawed her fingers into his neck, she wanted to promise him the world because she hated hearing him so angry and hurt and upset. Even when she was upset with him, it was hard to listen to that geeky lilt in his voice cracking underneath the pressure of some sort of pain. And, in that moment, Stephanie almost begged him to burrow away with her in that bunker and forget about everything and everyone else for the rest of eternity. Create a world underneath those covers that was removed from all those toxic factors and was just the two of them. Because, though she didn’t need Eddie to function and breathe and live, she wanted him just as much as he wanted her. Even if it killed her to admit it sometimes.
But, she didn’t promise that things would be okay when he implored her to, and let him continue talking as her eyes drifted shut. She stayed relaxed on her side, facing him, though she slowly curled herself together as he continued talking. It sounded just like Muerte said, didn’t it? That she was pulling strings here and there, mere puppets to an overlording puppetmaster, and orchestrating a relationship that she thought was different. There was a silence after he shifted and rambled on. His anger resonating through the darkness and bouncing to her ears. It sounded foreign, a different sort of anger than the sharp snaps she had heard before, and she wondered if it was directed towards her. “She said she did it,” she muttered after a long stretch of quiet. “She said she went into your brain and pushed around the anger and made you forgive her.” Maybe someone else would have been comforted by that thought, but Stephanie thought it was awful. “That she’s pulling your strings just as easily as she stopped my heart. She just twisted you until you brought her back into your life.” She rolled away finally, away from him and back into that pillow. “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. But, what if it’s true? What if all of this was just her manipulating you.”
When he didn’t get the promise he was looking for, not even a hint of softness or hope that he relied on from Stephanie so often, he slammed his arm down between them, bringing part of the blanket with him to create a wall of fabric. Stephanie was a living, breathing example of hope in Gotham and when she couldn’t even give him some of it, when she couldn’t even tell him that she believed in him, it crushed whatever optimism was trying to grow in his ribcage. He then began pulling and pushing the rest of the blanket to make twisted, complicated barriers between them before wrapping himself up in what was left and laying on the very edge of the end of the bed. Eddie gazed, unblinking at the slivers of light between the door and frame. They were right back where they started, weren’t they? Batman believed in him. Selina. Harley. Muerte. But, not Stephanie. Stephanie whom he had let so close knew better than anyone that he wasn’t capable of fixing anything and he was better off going back to pushing Gotham’s fragile little brains until they begged for mercy. He couldn’t do it. He knew deep down he had lost that part of him somewhere along the way, but maybe she was right in thinking all he was built for was playing the minds of other people until they broke down like him.
“You believe in so much, but you don’t believe in me. That’s good to know, Stephanie Brown. That’s very good to know.” He said sharply, this time the anger snapped at her so clearly it almost felt dangerous if he didn’t sound so broken down from it. “I told you about the book that took over my mind once. It’s possible, it’s very possible. But, I can tell you with certainty that there are things about me she couldn’t dream to manufacture. There’s so much she doesn’t understand about humans that she really couldn’t replicate it or influence the way she might have claimed. As for forgiving her, we’ve discussed how it was a reflection of my own darkness and that coupled with the fact that she’s my friend made me feel more empathetic.” Eddie’s voice was still sharp and so much louder than the whispers they were telling each other before. “Maybe it wasn’t empathy at all. Maybe I just like having things a certain way.” She could hear his teeth press together, gritting as he punched out the last couple of syllables and tried to imagine himself as a man who mistook people for objects and did not like having his things broken. He knew it wasn’t true, but it felt good to rise to the occasion when someone wondered if he was really a monster. This must have been how the cat felt when she shined her claws because being dangerous was the only real defense against people you cared about.
Stephanie hadn’t meant to doubt Eddie, or at least that was what she thought, but she wanted to express a fear that was chewing up her insides until they were completely raw. She felt a little sick curled up on that queen-sized bed, but she managed to sit up as he twisted up the blankets around and away from her. It reminded her for a moment of the web of red strings hanging in his living room that he ripped down in a rolling panic attack months beforehand, and the stark comparison had her stomach lurching. She never, ever wanted to see Eddie like that again -- manic, cloudyeyed, lost in riddles -- but here he was, wriggling away from her on that bed. She couldn’t even see him, but she knew. Oh, did she know. If they crawled out of this darkness, his brown eyes would be sharp and bearing into her soul like he wanted to burn holes through her entire being. “That’s not what I--,” she started, trailing off pathetically and watching the outline of his frame cocoon himself into the blanket. As if saving himself from here. There was a sharp stab in her chest at that thought, and she reached forward to tug against one of the sheets. But before she could needle him anymore, he was off again, and she sat there in silence and tried to listen to his chiding like a child being lectured for throwing mud during recess. As he continued on and on, her ears started to burn, her jaw set tightly, and her frame shook as she repressed a growing, nasty anger.
Eventually, she grew fed up of how misunderstood she felt. She started to talk over him, forcefully trying to interject scattered words that didn’t land within the wreckage of his rambling. It stung, honestly, to be accused of not believing in him or not being invested. “That’s not what I meant, Eddie,” she said, dangerously even, fingers twisting into that blanket and yanking it towards her to grab his attention. “Everything’s great, is that what you want to hear? Do you want me to lie? It scares the crap out of me to think about her even trying to do that to you. To us. I don’t know her as well as you do, and after what she’s done, who knows what she’s actually capable of?” Her breath shuddered, and she turned her face away, jaw set, though her fingers still twisted into the cotton fabric pooling around her. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want things to be okay, and it’s so unfair to me that you think I’d do that to you. I thought you knew me better than that.” And where his voice turned sharp and hard, hers strained just enough for him to understand. “And I’ll always believe in you. I’m allowed to not believe in everyone else, but I will always, always, always believe in you. But, I guess it doesn’t matter, does it,” she continued as she began a pathetic attempt to unravel herself from the knot of blankets she found herself in, “because you’ve decided I don’t.”
“All I want to hear is that you believe in me. That you love me. That you think this is going to work even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.” Eddie snapped a look back with anger she couldn’t see, wriggling in his blanket cocoon to face her, but making a bigger mess of the bed than it could have been before. With one of his strained, little noises, he yanked some of the blanket back from her as if it was the only thing keeping him safe and then decided to just roll out of it all together. With a soft thud he landed on the ground, free of his blanket nest and wedged between the door and the bed. “I need to hear it sometimes, why is that so much to ask?” He shouted from the floor, arm shooting up in the air in a flailing motion of frustration before he climbed back on the bed towards her.
His eyes were slowly adjusting, but all he could make out was her silhouette clutching the blankets and holding them close to her thin, broken body. Scared, hurt and tired of the outside world beating down their door. For a moment, he could see them as two poor kids from Gotham with terrible family lives and no money to buy any decent toys with. He could see them getting into similar fights with schoolyard bullies. He could see the hate they both learned to feel for their parents. There was the thread that connected them down to their bones and blood. Even though he was raised decades and decades and decades before her, they were the same broken, scared Gotham kids who just wanted to wrap themselves up in a blanket and shut out the rest of the world when it pushed them too far.
His voice softened and he tried not to trample over her feet and legs, but still managed to make a mess of it all. “I just need to hear it from you once and awhile. Everyone else can’t wait to tell me how much I care. How hard I work. But, you’re the closest I’ve ever let anyone. I need to hear it.” He peeled some of the blankets away and crawled under them, tugging the fabric in her hands to ask her to come close as he laid next to her. “I spent over a lifetime refusing to give a straight answer because it scared me. It’s easier wrapping up in questions until nothing can be perceived as the truth. But, I want to hear the truth from you over and over and I’ll never get sick of it.” Eddie looked up to the ceiling, brow creased. “You’re allowed to be scared. Damn it, I’m scared, too. But, I don’t think Death understands me well enough to control me like that.” He sighed with a pause, finally coming to terms with what Muerte was doing. “She’s probably dying. She probably thought it’d make you forgive me. Which just proves how clueless she is about people.”
Stephanie hissed and curved away as he managed to hit some of her tender spots on her legs before settling down again. When she was up and moving, it was easier to ignore the aches and sharp pains reverberating through her body. As she relaxed and laid down, however, every joint wailed, every bruise throbbed, and those ribs howled their sad tune to her. Yeah, it was painful, but she’d been through worse. She would always be through worse, and that made it easier to curl right back to her position, to let those blankets go, and to slide back down onto the bed. Pressing her body to his side, she slung an arm across his stomach, rested her head on his chest, and wrapped her bare leg haphazardly over his. She didn’t mind the dull throb in her chest when she had herself wrapped around Eddie.
She whined a little, muttering apologies into the cotton on his chest as he begged her for something so simple she felt stupid that he had to. “I thought you knew, I thought you would know. I tell you all the time, how much I love you, how much you mean to me, how much faith I have in you. I thought you would just know. It’s in every word I utter, every kiss, every touch, every time I look at you. Even when you piss me the hell off, it’s there. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, frowning at herself and fingers clawing at his side. As if saying you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine, and I’m being stupid. “I told you at the church how scared I am. See? I’m not lying. I’m scared out of my wits because of how important you are to me, and how much I would fall apart if I really lost you.” Sighing shakily, Steph nipped his chest through his shirt. She didn’t stir otherwise, but he could feel her frown against the thin fabric. “She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. She told me not to worry about her, but about you. Which is stupid of her to even say because I worry about you constantly.” She fell silent for a moment, eyes drifting shut slowly as her shoulders unlocked and some of the tension melted away. “Is it bad?” Of course it was bad, but she didn’t know what else to say.
Eddie wrapped his arm around her back, making an unsure noise like he had done enough damage to her body already and didn’t want to make it worse with some otherwise harmless cuddling. It didn’t stop him, though, because he wanted her close. The second Muerte started putting doubts in his head, he wanted Stephanie in his arms and wrapped around him. “It’s been a hard month for me.” He admitted gently, the sharpness dulled to affection and shouting quieted to the whisper he was using before when they were under the blankets. “Being the only sane person in Gotham can really drive a man crazy.” Eddie rubbed the tip of his chin against her hair, hand raking up and down her body through the fabric of his shirt that she was wearing before he relaxed and closed his eyes. “Thank you, though. Thank you for telling me. Even if I already know.” Eddie wasn’t known for his genuineness or maturity, but it shined through there. He knew he was weak, he laid himself out for her to help him and instead of pushing him down farther because of pride or her own anger, she pulled him back up. What else could he ask for?
His breathing evened out, but his body still buzzed with the usual warmth and energy. Despite the circumstances, despite the fact that Muerte could be dead as they laid there in that dark room, he was happy to have Stephanie with him. A small, comforted exhale escaped his lips and he murmured a couple I love yous before they could start talking about the lady in black that had been meddling with them. “The Lazarus Pit can kill her. I’ve seen it weaken her considerably. You can see it coursing through her veins, bright green and terrifying, slowly taking her down until she’s nothing.” Eddie’s voice wrapped around his words like he was weaving a riddle together for her. Lyrical, poetic. “Apparently, it’s spread past her legs. Ra’s can’t help. I don’t know the first thing about stopping the Lazarus Pit from working. So she’s probably going to die. And, in her guilt for nearly ruining my life, she’s been trying to force you and me back together. Like we’re in a dollhouse. She said I should teach you how to play pinball. Like that would fix anything.”
Stephanie sighed. “I know, baby, I’m sorry,” she said, imagining how bad his month had been, but not knowing first hand how awful everything was. Being doped up on something akin to PCP made the first two weeks a blur, of course, and she had been so angry before she and Eddie made up that she barely even thought about how he felt the entire time. He didn’t deserve her sympathy then, she believed, but now, she dealt it out to him in spades. He could tell how much she wanted to take away his pain in the press of her lips against that t-shirt, the soothing rub of her fingers on his side, the muttered apologies getting lost in the dark. She didn’t feel guilty for being angry with him. No, she had every right to be angry, and to be angry still (which was still bubbling underneath the surface and threatening to rear its ugly head at the most inconvenient moments). That didn’t mean she was a sadist, though, or liked causing others pain. Usually. The blonde bat didn’t want the people she cared about most to be the kind of pain that made your head hurt or your chest ache hard enough to make breathing near impossible. She didn’t like suffering; she’d been through enough suffering herself.
Which was why she was so unnerved by Muerte’s condition. Stephanie knew something was wrong, something was inexplicably off about her. And, though she hated the concept-turned-flesh with every fiber of her being, Steph didn’t want Muerte to be dying. Eddie could tell so in the sudden tenseness in her shoulder and the frown into his covered chest. “Oh, god.” Her stomach lurched uncomfortably, and she shook her head a little. “God, why would she have done that?” She sounded exasperated, but she knew exactly why. It was what had Damian and Kara hooking up, Helena threatening to jump off Wayne Tower, Stephanie herself teetering on the edge of a roof in midtown Gotham. The toxin. “Why can’t Ra’s help? He needs to help. She can’t--,” Steph started but cut herself off, fingers twisting a grip at his side, and she squeezed her eyes shut tightly before they snapped open again. Staring off into the darkness, she could feel the weight of it all pressing down on the both of them. Unrelenting, suffocating, vicious. Because though they laid there together, got locked away in that dark bedroom together, that would always be at the back of their minds. Gotham, or Death’s dying, or something else clamoring for their attention when they opened their eyes again.
“Pinball isn’t the first thing on my mind to fix things,” she said, flirting a little hollow, but her hand relented its grip on his side and slipped up his chest slooowwwllyyy until it rested gently somewhere on the expanse between his neck and cheekbone. Drumming lightly against the skin and sharp jaw there as if to make their presence known. “Aren’t you worried about her?” the blonde bat asked, hoping a little selfishly that he would proclaim her more important. “That you might be missing the last bit of time you could have with her?” What happened if Death died? Steph furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, not entirely convinced that this would be the last they’d see of Eddie’s patron saint. It couldn’t be.
In the dark, he focused on her hands and the ways she said sorry like she was trying to take some of the burden off him. If Eddie’s boat was sinking, there was Stephanie with a bucket throwing water out while he patched up what was broken. He should have known he could count on her for it, even when she was still angry at him. Because he’d do the same for her. Because Stephanie wouldn’t let him sink. Because she loved his scrawny, screwed up ass. There was evidence to prove this before when she kept him from getting tangled in a red yarn room full of puzzles, but he was too wrapped up in Gotham to see it until now.
Gotham, that was still rattling their door no matter where they went or how expertly they hid. It was always going to be a part of them. Most days, Eddie was happy for it. Tonight? He wanted the city to give them some room.
“Who would help Death? Do you know one person besides me that gives a damn about her? If I told anyone she was sick, they’d throw a party.” He gave a frustrated sigh and turned his face into the palm and fingers of her hand, kissing and nomming away at them quickly and lovingly in some affection shark attack. “And, she doesn’t want my help. She wants to die alone under the porch like a old cat and make sure I’m happy before she passes on.” Eddie gave another, longer kiss to the tips of her fingers like they were at some Jane Austen ball and kissing a girl’s hand was practically third base. “There’s nothing I can do. She wants me to leave her alone. She made me angry at her by trying to play couples therapist with me when I never asked for it.” He turned his face away so her hand was caught in the nape of his neck and the scruff of his hair. “So, I’m leaving her alone.”
Stephanie’s last question took a longer time for Eddie to respond to. Loss wasn’t something he understood or experienced for a long time. When Batman “died”, he only knew that something was wrong. No one had told the coma-riddled man what really happened. When one of the rogues died, he knew they’d come back. This was different. “The last person who died that meant anything to me was my mother. I was very young and it was a long time ago before I developed any of my eccentricities. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. I remember picking the grass around her grave during the funeral. I remember avoiding her favorite stores through my teen years. I remember crying near our favorite ice cream shoppe so my dad wouldn’t see. I think it’s different now.”
Steph whined as he sighed, heart in her throat as he laid the scenario down for her. “You’d be surprised who are allies in this city. Even Death has friends,” she murmured softly, wiggling her fingers as he attacked them with affection. Her skin tingled as his lips peppered her hand with kisses as if finally fully realizing how much she had missed all of this. The easy affection that bubbled between the two of them and swirled around the little space they left between where her body ended and his began. She missed the simplicity of it, the complete physical act of being them. Sure, they had plenty of clawing affection over the last few months, desperate and dirty and passionate, but they tended to be lost in riddles and mixed emotions. Why couldn’t Gotham and the rest of the world just leave them away for one night? Still, she didn’t really like the idea that Eddie was going to cut her off because he might regret it later. She regretted things when her father died. “You’re going to miss her if she does, though. I hope you told her how much she means to you.”
Her fingers eventually tangled in his hair, and she threaded it through until she could clutch a handful. And, she tugged as if to remind him that she would be there for him if he did go to her or if he didn’t. Even though she was pleased he was going to stay with her instead of trot off for his best friend. It was selfish, very selfish, but she was allowed to be a little selfish now and then, wasn’t she? “You’re going to regret if it ends on bad terms,” she said, hating the taste of every single syllable breathing out of her mouth. God, did she not want to do anything to help Muerte, but she was thinking about Eddie and his feelings. Not Muerte. Well, not entirely. She didn’t forgive the woman-concept, but she didn’t want Muerte to die either. Stephanie knew way too much about loss. It was a constant factor in her life, the way people walked in and out like a revolving door. Some days, it hurt more than she could bare.
Steph twisted herself up and arched her back to look at him in the darkness, still half-straddling him and using her free arm to brace herself as she hovered over him. Through the significantly shorter blonde curtain, she caught the line of his cheek, the sharp angle of his nose, the curve of his lip, and she rumbled a quiet little noise, something mingled between sympathy and anger that he had to suffer this. “You’re allowed to feel whatever you want, Eddie. There isn’t a handbook on stuff like that.” Which was funny, coming from her, when her problem with him at the moment stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t acted accordingly when she needed him to do it most. She tugged against his hair again before swooping down to press a kiss to his hairline. Then, she rested her forehead on top of his. Blue eyes barely visible in the dimness of the room, nose tip brushing his, breath tickling his lips. “You’re allowed to figure it out. And I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.”