Work Text:
It’s only 8:15 in the evening. She’s done nothing for the past six hours. The feeling—it’s sitting close to the top of her chest, close to her throat, almost crawling up to choke her. She’s been lying on the twin-size bed with her arm over her eyes, trying to will it down. Make it go away. It won’t.
It won’t. It won’t.
She’s trying to deal with it on her own, trying to be self-sufficient and morally righteous and not allow herself to give in to the one craving she knows will make her feel better.
But the alternative is to stare contemplatively at the blades in the bathroom and—
No. It won’t go away.
She sits up in bed, finally. The room has gone dark around her—she never bothered to turn on the lights. The window lets in the pale, blue, shadowy light of dusk. She reaches around for her phone—finds it resting in the seat of her chair, parked dutifully beside the bed. Right. She twists her whole torso to reach for it. Remembers she’s wearing pajamas—she’ll have to change that.
Punches in the number by heart because she’s not allowed to save it into her address book—security concerns.
“Barbara,” he says, matter-of-factly, tersely. He’s got the cowl on; she can tell.
“I’m… feeling that way again.”
No response. She wishes she could clear up enough brain space like a good-little-girl-with-a-crush to wonder about what he’s thinking/doing/feeling but 100% of her mental faculties have been rerouted to restrain her from gouging her own eyes out with too-sharp fingernails and maybe she can pick the lock on dad’s ammo box and—
“I have to patrol tonight,” he says, finally.
And she jumps back with “You’ll manage,” and maybe a tacked-on “please.”
“Barbara, we talked about this—”
“You talked about this, I pretended to listen, and goddamn it Bruce I’m going to fucking scream I need—”
“Boundaries, Barbara.”
“Book me a fucking cab, Bruce,” she spits vicious into the phone, “I’ll show you boundaries.”
Then she’s watching the second hand of her wall clock orbit slowly through its numbers and listening to the clack clack of The Batman still typing on the other end of the phone. She wonders if he’ll say no (he better fucking not say no, she’ll slit her wrists and leave his secret identity taped to the wall over the bathtub, she will, she’ll do it) she wonders if today is the day he’s had enough of her emotional blackmail. He’s an adult and a vigilante and she knows someday he’ll say no, and it terrifies her.
“Ten minutes,” he says, and the line goes dead.
Victory splashes like cool water over her bones and she—lift, adjust—she gingerly lifts herself off the bed and into the chair—tuck, roll forward, avoid the bra on the floor. She slips into different clothes in a way exactly opposite from what her physical therapist taught her, presses her bare ass to the seat of the chair irreverently and tugs new panties up her uncooperative legs and a skirt and then sandals to complete the “I just fell out of bed but I can still fuck you up” look.
She grabs a banana on the way out of the house, and chuckles a bit manically as she takes the first bite. Rolls up the ramp into the yellow minivan with the peel caught between her teeth.
He has to carry her down the steps to the cave, because, for a mega-billionaire, he never did install an elevator and God—the more she thinks about it, the more she suspects it was intentional.
Leaning against Batman’s armor plating always used to make her feel small and safe and protected but now it just makes her feel small and angry and powerless and small and she tugs at his cape just to spite him. “I want all this off,” she says, “And we’re using the bedroom down here.”
“You’re acting like an entitled brat.”
“I’m acting how I want to act—shut up. Shut the hell up.”
He shifts her weight in his arms and it jostles her. Probably deliberate. Probably a message. Probably a resentful reminder that I could still drop you. “How do you even know about that bedroom?” he asks, “You’ve only slept on the cots.”
“I had a suspicion,” she replies, “Hacked into your servers to confirm with the cave’s blueprints. After all, where else are you going to take pretty damsels who want to bang Batman but don’t know your secret identity?”
“You hacked into my servers?”
“Yeah.”
“Barbara, that’s million’s worth of tech. That’s really impressive hacking work—”
“Less motivational bullshit, more naked.”
He grits his teeth. “I brought you here to keep an eye on you, not to actually—”
And then her hand is around his neck, she’s got two free fingers aimed at the sensitive muscles behind the jaw. “Don’t you dare back out on me.”
His eyes are dark and violent and he lets out a malicious whisper, “You don’t have the power here, Barbara. You don’t get to call the shots. You don’t have cell reception, you don’t have mobility, and right now you’re going to stop acting entitled to my cooperation.”
“Oh, is that it?” she bites back, “If I don’t act nicely and say please and thank you, you’re gonna put me on the floor of the cave and force me to crawl just to prove a point?”
He doesn’t respond. His jaw is tight.
“You’re right, I don’t have my mobility. Are you really going to use that against me, Bruce? Are you going to humiliate me? Just to teach me a lesson? Just to teach me respect?”
He snarls, “My point is—”
“I know what your point is, but I’m saying your threats are empty. So I can disrespect you all I want.”
“Fuck you,” he grits out.
“Yeah,” she says, “bedroom. Now.”
So he carries her to the wall of rock with the hidden lever that triggers the door opening, revealing a Spartan living space with a large enough bed and electric lamps fashioned like torches along the walls. He drops her from two feet above the mattress as a little act of rebellion and she laughs, bounces, but it cuts off, it doesn’t feel right.
“Take off the suit,” she commands from her makeshift throne, disheveled and grinning.
“Why do you want this?” he asks.
His face is doing that thing where he goes all blank and retreats into himself like he’s just waiting for it all to be over. He unbuckles the armor mechanically.
“I need to hurt something,” she says, “and since you don’t want me to hurt myself—”
“You need help, Barbara,” he says, stoically.
“Oh, yeah? Newsflash, B, I’m already getting help. But help is slow, and the meds are shit, and since it’s your fault I’m like this—” she throws a pillow at him only because she can’t kick out at him. The dissatisfaction is visceral. “—the least you could do is give me a little supplementary—” another pillow, “—therapy!” another, this one hits him in the face just as he removes the cowl, the impact whipping through his damp hair.
“When we’re done tonight,” he challenges, “will you feel any better?”
She lunges forward as best she can, nearly falling off the foot of the bed in the process, legs twisting uncomfortably beneath her like deadweight, and she latches onto the fabric of the front of the undersuit and holds on like she would if this were his tie. “You know what?” she says, “I probably will.”
“Fine,” he says, and whatever piece of Bruce that was left retreats inside of him and all she’s left with is a resigned, emotionless shell of a man.
Good enough, she thinks.
“Strip,” she says.
He strips. Naked but for dark briefs. Nothing she hasn’t seen before.
“Fix my,” she says next, shifting uncomfortably, tangling in the sheets, “fix my goddamn legs.”
He lifts her like a doll, leans her back against the headboard and removes the blanket from her feet. It’s a relief, to have it done by someone else. Saves her the indignity. She shouldn’t have lunged out at him like that without paying attention to where her legs would end up, but then something about being around him frees the feral, angry part of her.
Feral. Angry. “Get on the bed, face down.” And he does, without complaint, because he’s not really there anymore, he’s—meditating or something, he’s—trained to endure torture, he’s—not going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him react.
It all just makes her so… angry.
Then she’s on top of him. Digging her fingernails into the meat of his shoulders and dragging lines down his skin. Birthmarks and blackheads from where the armor traps sweat. He wouldn’t make a good GQ cover at the moment. She tears up the uneven sections and catches dead skin under her nails, then goes again, with that much force, that much— “Fuck!” she says, and he says nothing, because he’s not really there.
Her fingernails aren’t sharp enough to break skin.
She tries viciously to tear up his side, his left side with the leftover scars from thousand’s worth of surgery and bullet holes and the skin, the skin goes white under her nails and then red red red in her wake, and he says nothing, makes no noise at all and she tries to press farther, harder, deeper.
No response.
Then she’s hitting him.
Uncoordinated, sloppy, not at all like he trained her. Still hard enough to leave bruises, she hopes. She knocks his shoulder blades out of alignment, and tries to dislocate his elbow but she’s unsuccessful, and he doesn’t respond and—
Then she’s going after his spine.
Unconsciously.
Hitting him and hitting him, the thump of bone against muscle against bone, centering in the small of his back like maybe through the supernaturally profound hate boiling in her gut she can transfer her fucked-up nerves to his body instead.
And if she’s crying (in rage or despair or mania) then at least his face is tucked into the pillows and he can’t see. Won’t look at her. Good.
Not good. She feels—
like the tectonic plates are shifting under her skin, like her shoulder is spewing clouds of ash and her eyes dripping lava and her lungs like earthquakes and the tight tight ache in her abdomen is subduction—the fragile parts of her grating against and then slipping underneath the feral parts, melting down into magma to be recreated in explosions of fire and rock and–
yet she also feels like the tectonic plates are suddenly going to disengage and fly out and away from her like armor plating crumpling to the floor until all that’s left is the soft red-hot mushy core and
she doesn’t
want
to be
vulnerable
anymore.
The earth’s crust trembles. She doesn’t think she can handle the eruption all on her own.
Through sheer force of will, she’s suddenly straddling him. Her skirt is discarded. Her panties are still dry. Her whole center of gravity is braced by her palms against his back and her cunt is lodged against his cotton clad ass. Her foot’s twisted wrong but who the hell cares? Not her. This is as perfect as this is ever going to get, long as she shall live.
It feels nice against her clit.
He’s still not reacting. At least his absence lets her keep her dignity as she fumbles and struggles for the right position and does things that the rest of the world would deem bizarre.
She can’t thrust her hips, but she can pull herself forward, rock her clit against the cleft of his well-sculpted muscle awkwardly but firmly, using her grip on his shoulders as leverage.
Is this intimacy?
Is this all that’s left of intimacy, given that there is so little left of her? (and not even just physically, but emotionally?)
She grabs his hair and pulls him up toward her, and he grimaces but says nothing, stares resolutely forward, feels the way the direct contact with her clit gets her body slick against his, and against his will. He still. Does. Nothing. Allows her to mime fucking him. Allows her to take what she needs, anything she needs from him—all but his attention.
“This only works…” she pants against his ear, fingers tight in his hair, “because you feel guilty. You feel guilty and you’re letting me have my way as—as penance.”
He says nothing.
“Right?” she demands more urgently, “And it doesn’t matter what I do, because you still care about me.”
He says nothing, he doesn’t look at her, he endures.
“Just like Harvey,” she bites out, “Just like Joker. Just like everyone else. As long as you feel even an ounce of responsibility, we get a free pass to do—hah—whatever the fuck we want.”
Given that she can do whatever the fuck she wants, what the fuck does she want to do? Fuck. She can’t help herself so she drops his hair—he lands hard on the bed—and she braces her weight against him again, tugging down his briefs with her free hand.
Because she wants to push him so hard he’ll push back. She wants him to—
Suddenly his grip is tight over her wrist and he’s saying, low, like a Batman order, “Stop.”
She growls, lets go of his waistband and instead goes for his scalp again, pins his skull to the pillowcases and forces him to bare his neck. “No,” she replies, with just as much threat in her voice.
“Barbara…”
She plasters her torso against his spine, t-shirt against his bare skin, just to reach—she bites down on his earlobe. Underneath her, his body is tense, prepared to throw her off of him but not yet ready to make the call.
This is how lions mount lionesses, she remembers idly. With sharp teeth poised to plunge into their mate’s flesh. After all, it’s the only way you can keep a body with that much power pinned underneath you in a submission hold.
“I’ll bite a piece of your ear off,” she says. “Permanent damage.”
“You’d be surprised what my surgeons can fix,” he snarls back.
She jabs two fingers under his ribcage and he flinches: reflex. “Yeah,” she says. “Well, I know what they can’t fix.”
He frowns against the mattress. “I walked into that.”
“You did,” she agrees, and then she’s up again, braced with one hand against his body and the other tearing down his briefs without preamble.
It’s moments like this when she remembers he’s an Adonis and she feels her body shiver just because she knows him, this man with all the social clout in the universe and she’s got his whole psyche twisted and deformed and wrapped around her finger.
So then she’s spreading his goddamn perfect ass and spitting against his hole and—there, he’s flinching again, she got him, she got to him. No retreating to his torture-proof meditative hideaway—she’s got his, his number.
She’s got his body speared on two fingers and his breath gasping against the sheets.
Maybe this is it. Maybe this is all intimacy will ever be for her.
“Stop,” he says again, and his voice breaks.
“Why?” she counters, “Because you’re genuinely withdrawing consent? Or because you think following through with this will cause me—” she twists her fingers and he gasps again, knees spreading, “irreparable damage, and you’re trying to protect me from myself?”
“You know which,” he groans, and then he’s burying his face in the crooks of his elbows.
“Well, I don’t need your protection,” she says, “after you’ve done such a shit job of it so far.”
She realizes, as she forces her fingers inside his body and he squirms and shakes and finally begins unravelling for her, that she didn’t think this all the way through, and her fingers are going to smell after this, aren’t they, and also, she doesn’t know where the prostate is, never paid much attention in Sex Ed, never expected she’d ever end up trying to pleasure (trying to fuck) a man.
She pulls one leg into a new position on the side of Bruce’s body so that she can sit up and use both hands without worrying about falling victim to gravity. Thank some higher power; the leg cooperates.
She slaps Bruce’s ass as hard as she can manage, and maybe it’ll leave a handprint-shaped mark. She sure hopes so.
God, he’s responding, he’s responding, and the pillowcase is wet under his face, and he’s pushing back toward her fingers and—
If she’s Vesuvius then he’s Pompeii; if she’s got to erupt then she’s gonna drown him in ash, burn him down with her.
He’s certainly close. He’s certainly burning up around her fingers, tight and hot and unworthy.
And then it’s more forceful, rhythmic, but she can’t see his genitals pinned underneath him and she can’t see his face and—
She pulls away. “Face me.”
“I am…” he pants, muffled against fabric, “…facing you…”
“Not figuratively, jackass.” She pushes at his hip until he acquiesces and flips over.
She’s fumbling, rearranging, pushing limbs in their proper place and he’s just lying back against the pillows, his hair mussed, face flushed, watching her with such tired eyes, such pity in his expression. It infuriates her.
And her intentions change, and she’s furious and she doesn’t exactly, not quite, she doesn’t, she doesn’t want to hurt him, she wants to—
“Quit looking at me like—give me your—yeah,” she says, and he cooperates about as much as her legs did.
But he’s Batman and somehow she’s got him on his back with his ankles up over her shoulders, whole body exposed and resigned and all red in the face.
She could point out that he’s hard, that he’s hard because he gets off on it, because he seeks absolution, because he still feels guilty and taking punishment from her is orgasmic, but… it’s so obvious that it goes without saying. He knows it. He knows how fucked up it is. He’s still staring up at her through his lashes waiting impatiently and desperately for her fingers.
Catharsis. Was this always about catharsis?
No. Intimacy. She wants—
No. Power. She wants—
Him.
So she pushes her fingers inside of him and — her beautiful, beautiful man, strong, invincible, powerful—he submits to it, submits to her, the way he always, always will. He opens his legs for her, pushes his hips up off the bed just to get closer to her, starts breathing hard through his nose.
He tilts his head back and his mouth falls open, and he’s hard for her, fucked out and ravaged, mindless and alive, mad mad mad.
Her gut goes cold. She’s fucking him faster, harder, knuckles slamming against his body.
“God,” he moans, so quietly, like a whisper, like sin. Like he doesn’t want anyone to know.
“Say please,” she grunts, “Don’t act like an… entitled brat.”
He’s tensing around her fingers, she knows she can push him over, without even touching him, just by force of will, by this hold she has over him.
She has him. Like… she couldn’t be Batgirl anymore, but this is her consolation prize—one that she had to fight for every step of the way but, damn it, she wasn’t going to leave broken and emptyhanded.
“Please,” he whispers, and his eyes are watering and she knows it feels good because she can see the pleasure electric in his face.
She grabs his jaw between grip-trained fingers, fucks her fingers deep inside, and says, “Come.”
Is it climactic? No. But it’s satisfying.
His legs are trembling… his whole body is red and flushed now, and he’s coming with her grip still tight on his jaw, cock sputtering cum against his skin. She notices, as he loses himself in pleasure, a scar on his neck that she’s never actually seen before. She wonders who it’s from. His slick hole twitches around her fingers.
He’s just a man. Just a body. Breakable, with scars, marks left by all the other people he allowed to hurt him.
He sweats during sex. He’s got dark hair all up his stomach. He’s breathing hard in the aftershock of orgasm and she’s not even aroused anymore.
“God,” she says. She’s shaking. She’s crying—when did that start up again? She pulls her fingers out of him unceremoniously and shoves his ankles off her shoulders.
She collapses next to him on the bed. His body is hot. She dissociates. Notices absently that yes, her fingers do, in fact, smell like shit.
“Barbara…” he breathes, hoarse.
“I can’t breathe,” she says.
She’s still—fuck—she’s still crying, pressing tears against his chest and he’s letting her, he’s running fingers through her hair. Bastard. He’s shushing her and trying to comfort her even as he has his own cum cooling against his stomach.
“I can’t…” she says again, more urgently, “…breathe…”
“Try to match my breathing,” and his voice only trembles a little as he says it, but just enough that she’s inclined to listen to him, that she doesn’t feel intimidated by his usual stoicism.
She feels the way his chest moves, expands and contracts underneath her touch, and carefully she imitates, and regains some semblance of control.
Why did this happen? Why did she do this? What did she get out of this?
He’s holding her, cradling her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds… weak. He sounds regretful. “I should have stopped you.”
Her grip on his arm is tight. She doesn’t want to let go.
“It was too much…” he says, “You were too… manic, I should have stopped you before you—”
And then she wants to scream, but she doesn’t have enough air in her lungs, so it comes out as this short staccato wail and then she tries to punch his stomach—smears her knuckles in his cum. “Don’t tell me what’s too much,” she chokes out, “I’m a goddamn adult.”
He sighs, “Barbara…”
“I just—” she breathes, “I just… raped… and you won’t even give me credit for that, you still think—look at me, I’m Batman, everything’s my fault, and it’s—”
“You’re not… making sense…” His fingers tremble as he strokes her hair, his voice shakes, maybe fragility, maybe just more goddamn guilt.
“You disgust me,” she whispers. Only, that’s not entirely true.
She curls up against him. Presses her cheek against his chest. Listens to him breathe. She wants to keep him like this, submissive and willing, pleasured and grateful and dazed. She wants to keep him. Because her whole life—her mind itself is sloshing and spitting and spilling over, and having Batman like this underneath her…. At least it reassures her that she’s still powerful. No matter how broken or lonely or vicious she feels.
She runs her fingers through his cum, paints the tip of his softening cock with it, listens to his sharp, horrified, quiet gasps as she toys absently with his sensitivity.
“You make me feel…” she whispers, trailing off. She can’t put the end of that sentence into words.
“I know,” he says.
She sighs, and presses her face against his pink, too-hot skin. “You really don’t know, actually,” she says, “but, okay.”