7930/Not That Different

Not That Different
Date of Scene:	01 September 2021
Location:	Selina Kyle's Penthouse
Synopsis:	The night Batman came to Selina's apartment, he makes a decision to risk allowing Selina to finally know the truth. The Bat's out of the bag
Cast of Characters:	Selina Kyle, Bruce Wayne

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Selina Kyle has posed:
    (SEPTEMBER 1st, 2021)

    Okay, so. Things got a little out of hand.

    It happens! Between Batman and Catwoman it... *certainly* happens. Traditionally it does not happen immediately after Selina Kyle has made herself vulnerable, or when Batman intends to leave.

    It happened rather suddenly, and Selina didn't have a costume to her name at that exact moment, leaving her covered in precious little other than a tangle of bedsheets, pressed against the Dark Knight's side with one arm draped over his chest, and her head resting on his shoulder. She's had time to catch her breath. Now comes the hard part they often don't bother with.

    Selina Kyle generally has confidence to spare, but she seems almost... cautious at the moment, despite a bit of a lazy smile. "... So...!" she opens, perhaps inelegantly. "Do we... want to talk about what just happened? Or should we, ah... be too cool for that sort of thing?"

    Selina shifts a little in bed and notes, "I mean. It's 'Plan A' for a reason."

Bruce Wayne has posed:
It would be an odd sight for anyone who wasn't Selina, who is altogether too familiar with it. The Batman lays in bed, the cowl still drawn over his face despite his chest and arms being bare. A network of scars are visible beneath the hair on his chest, including a trio of claw marks that the Catwoman herself put there going on two decades ago now. He still wears the leggings of his suit, though the cape and tunic hang lazily over a nearby chair spilling out into a puddle of grey-black.

"This isn't what I came here for," he admits, though all the same he doesn't move from the cozy position they find themselves in, "I don't want you to feel ... "

'Taken advantage of' is what he's going to say, but he cuts himself off in the end. That's not what this is. He knows it, too. As much as he tries to paint their encounters (and there have been more than one) as casual flings brought on by an excess in adrenaline, now he has to admit that there's something there. Something that saw her worrying - hurting - and needed to soothe it.

They've come a long way from playing cops and robbers on Gotham's rain-slick rooftops.

"What's there to say about it?"

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina smirks a little bit despite herself and purrs, "Noooo, I know, you had much more... 'cryptic' reasons." She still doesn't really know what to make of the question Batman asked her, but she's good at ignoring inconvenient things. Apart from this, apparently.

    That smile fades a little as Batman's sentence goes unfinished. Her hand's begun to wander, but everywhere it goes she seems to find a new scar. Part of her brain is devoted to guessing at their origins, while another tries to come up with a response to Batman's unspoken worry. She gives up on both with a little sigh.

    She finds three straight lines carved across Batman's chest, and traces over them with the three fingers responsible for them. She frowns a little. She's not big on apologies - and it's not like he never hit her back - but it IS a pretty stark reminder of where she's been, and a contrast to where she's going now. Wherever that is.

    When Batman responds, Selina takes a deep breath and lets it out as a short huff, shaking her head and saying "Nothing. There's nothing to say about it."

    A moment passes.

    "... You just don't usually... stick around. And I don't... usually embarrass myself before you..." Selina gives a mischevious little smile and makes a lazy equivalent of 'quote marks' with two fingers that just move against Batman's body, where he he's not looking to see it anyway, "...'Fraternize'."

Bruce Wayne has posed:
"I don't," Batman replies, the words half question and statement as he lays there. Behind the cowl, his eyes flick down to watch her hand trace over the scars.

A perfect memory allows him to recall it vividly. The smell of smoke in the air as the building burned beneath them. The prickling of sweat stinging his back and his legs. His hand clasping her shoulder, and then the white hot pain as those claws cut straight through the bat-symbol on his chest and an inch past flesh into the pectoralis major. It had felt like fire under his skin for weeks. Every breath was agony.

And here they are.

"Selina," he continues, voice low but somehow softer and different to what is normally associated with him as the Batman, "This wasn't a mistake. I know it now. It wasn't a moment of weakness. Not for either of us."

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina Kyle's memory is NOT perfect, but there was... a relatively narrow window in time when she would have been willing to do something like that. To him, anyway. She remembered a rush, a thrill. Pride, almost. She'd done what so many people had tried and failed to do. She'd made the Bat bleed.

    Selina... doesn't devote a lot of energy to thinking about regrets. She hasn't devoted much energy to thinking about *that*.

    "No?" She asks softly, shifting to look up at his cowled face properly, voice soft, green eyes curious. "... What was it?"

Bruce Wayne has posed:
"No."

He finally shifts in the bed, sitting upright and regrettably extricating himself from their tangle of limbs. He plants one hand behind him on the bed to stabilize himself, the other dangling across a crooked knee. He looks at her and then out towards the Gotham skyline, watching the orange haze of the rising sun out over the water.

"We started this as enemies. There was a time where I worked tirelessly to dry and bring you in. I wanted to see you in Blackgate more than I wanted anything. Before the Jokers and Two-Faces crawled out from the cracks. I lost hours ... days of sleep trying to catch you. But you'd always slip through my fingers."

He rises to his feet now, moving towards the window. His back to her, she can see a fresh array of scars from throughout his career. Knife wounds, burns, even a bullet hole in his shoulder that looks as though it hasn't quite healed fully. His body is a roadmap of pain and suffering he's gladly taken on in the service of his great calling.

"After a while," he offers, still staring out the window, "I realized something about myself. I was loosening my grip. As I improved, as I got to know you better. There'd be moments I knew I had you. Dead to rights. And I let myself doubt. I don't doubt, Selina. Not with anyone but you. But now I understand it wasn't doubt that stopped me."

He looks back to her now, over his shoulder.

"It was ... love, I think. Infatuation? Affinity? Whatever it was, it stayed my hand. I knew I didn't want to bring you in. I didn't want to take you off the board because the world would be that much colder and darker without you in it."

"Selina, I - "

He stops himself and takes a deep breath. Both hands reach up towards the cowl, fingers curling beneath the bottom edge of it as he begins to draw it up. Up and over his face.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina blinks curiously as Batman begins to speak, propping herself up with one arm while laying on her side, listening with an expression somewhere between nostalgia and concern. She smiles fondly at the memory, despite herself, and comments: "... Took you forever to catch me." It made her feel like a pretty big deal! Granted, she *was* a pretty big deal, but morale's important.

    Batman moves away - becomes a black shape in front of the light. She gathers up the sheets a bit, holding them to her chest as she sits up in bed, brow furrowed with confusion.

    Her breath catches when he just... comes out and says it. A girlish fantasy she'd entertained early on; a notion she'd laughed at more than once; the simple foundation adding decades of tension to a complex relationship... and he just...

    Says it.

    She's very nearly too struck to notice what's happening in time. Very nearly. But she was always quick on her feet. In a heartbeat she's there behind him, grabbing hold of his hands, stopping them before they can finish lifting that mask. "*Don't!*" She cries, startling herself by being far louder than she'd intended. "... Don't." She says again, much more softly.

    She bites her lip for a long silent moment of anxiety, trying to sort out what her own feelings even are, having followed an impulse as she so often does. Her hands move from his hands, to his face as she begins to speak, her voice unusually heavy with restrained emotion.

    "... Weren't you disappointed? When you found out who I was. The unstoppable Catwoman, turning out to be just... some pretty girl with a thing for animals? It was... ridiculous, wasn't it?" Certainly, Selina felt like she'd lost a certain power when she found out Batman knew her true identity.

    Selina's hands drift down to Batman's shoulders, squeezing them tightly. "... What if it ruins everything? I mean... who could you... *possibly* be that means anywhere as much to me as..." Selina closes her eyes, "... you." After a moment her eyes open narrowly, looking downward. "... Do you really want to risk this? On me?"

Bruce Wayne has posed:
He's always been good at reading body language, and when Selina leaps to her feet he already knows the reason. Batman deliberately slows down, letting her catch his hands and drawing them away from his mask once she has. He leaves it on, mouth a grim line and eyes concealed behind the white gleam of the hardware built beneath it. His hands lift to her wrists as she grasps his shoulders, clasping them gently.

"Disappointed?"

He lets the word hang in the air, doing her the courtesy of actually considering it. It had certainly been strange. But he'd never been disappointed. No, never, and he tells her so.

"Selina, it took me years to become who I am. I climbed mountains on the edge of the world just to pull together what I felt I needed to know. I had a fortune to do it with, too. You? You came out of ... nothing. Nowhere. You sprang out of the dark and took the world by the throat and you made it accept your terms. You made it make sense."

He takes another deep breath: "If there ever was somebody who deserved to know. Someone who deserved the right? It's you, Selina. Because we're not different. Not really. Not in the ways that count."

Selina Kyle has posed:
    Selina is silent as Batman speaks, but her heart pounds in her ears so loudly that it's hard to imagine he can't hear it. She feels her throat tighten and her lip quiver as she closes her eyes slowly. For a very long moment, she's silent; processing what she's been told. Hints have been given. She doesn't spare them too much thought. He's trying to hand her the answer anyway, it's a waste of time compared to sorting out her feeling sright now.

    Very, very softly, Selina replies, "... You're god damned right, I did."

    So, true to her nature, Selina decides. She's decides he's going to do it, because she wants him to do it. Catlike to the end. Slowly, silently, Selina steps in front of Batman, looking up at him with green eyes that are already watering up as she tells him, simply, "... Show me."

Bruce Wayne has posed:
Batman takes her hands and clasps them in his own. There's no gloves, nothing between them in the way of a disguise. His knuckles are bruised and cut - the potential state of them, given what he does of a night. But the pain is something he long ago learned to compartmentalize and forget. He would feel uncomfortable without it now.

His fingers knit with hers, and he draws their hands together up to the lip of the mask. He holds them there for a moment, giving her a moment to stop him again. Or maybe just a moment to convince himself he is wrong. But it passes like a ship in fog, and the motion continues.

In one slow gesture the mask peels away, his head shifting to let the eyepieces pull away neatly from his skin. The thing is removed like a second layer of skin and dropped at his feet. Forgotten.

His features are worn, not quite like how she's seen him before. There are bags under his eyes. A little bit of salt and pepper stubble on his jaw. His hair is not slicked back like she's familiar with, instead it is a sweaty mess sticking out at odd angles. There's bruising just beneath one eye where some alleyway thug got a lucky punch in. But there's no mistaking him.

Bruce Wayne.

Selina Kyle has posed:
    "*Bruce.*" The word comes out of Selina's mouth like a gunshot, yet barely has any voice or strength to it at all. She feels like the room's spinning like a top in a laundry machine. It makes no sense, but it explains everything. It feels utterly inexplicable, but also feels like the confirmation of something she already knew on some level. She feels like a fool, but she also feels...

... Relieved.

    Tears begin trickling down her face as she stares wide eyed, gently shaking her head. "... You..." She begins to pull herself closer, "I am..." Selina kisses him, hard, but breaks it quickly, "... so..." she kisses him rapidly, repeatedly, struggling to breathlessly speak between embraces, "... *fucking*... pissed off... at *yoooouuu!!*" ending in another long kiss she seems loathe to break.