Re: quicklog -- steph/bruce: dive bar.
[The mention of Alfred brought a wave of wistfulness, along with a sharp pain in his chest that never seemed to lessen with time. Bruce missed him terribly, he couldn't help it; the man had raised him, been there every step of the way, and now—he was gone. Gone, and he might never come back.] I don't think I'd mind the clucking, even while hungover. [He smiled, sadly, and even though he noticed the look in her eyes he didn't comment on it. Sometimes he wondered what Alfred would think if he could see them now, their fractured little family that never seemed to hold itself together for very long. He wasn't ready to give up on it, on them, but it was easy to become discouraged. Fighting what often felt like a losing battle wore one down quickly.
Shaking off the morose silence that had momentarily engulfed them, he managed a smile that as more real—admittedly, his second whiskey helped.] What would I do without you? [It could be taken as a joke, yes, but there was a serious undertone to it, too. Without someone to keep him from beating himself up, Bruce knew he was at risk of sinking very, very low. Stephanie wasn't the only one who tried, but she was one of the few who could get past his walls. Not letting people in when he should, that was familiar. They had a lot in common, the two of them, and maybe that was why he wouldn't be in a dive bar taking shots with anyone else.
Of course, he wasn't entirely clueless to the art of tequila shots. Still, Bruce watched, and he laughed at the way she shivered after tossing the shot back.] And yet, we're lured in time after time. [The devil or not, he wasn't going to refuse. And it was a sight to see indeed, Bruce Wayne licking salt off his hand, gulping down the shot with a shiver of his own and sucking on the lime without much relief.] Eugh. [He pulled a face and drank down some of his whiskey.] I haven't done that in a long time.