April Seventeenth – Chapter 1 – Bruce

Disclaimer: So that this story fits inside of Patreon’s Community Guidelines, it’s been revised so that it occurs in an AU where all the characters are legal adults. This includes the characters not involved in sexual events. Everybody is an adult, without a single exception. Sorry about the inconvenience.

As he heard the muffled footsteps echoing off the walls of the Batcave, Bruce Wayne couldn’t help the upward quirk of his lips. Maybe one day his ward would finally catch him unaware, but it would not be today.

“Nightwing.”

The acrobat sighed, and the sound of his steps raised to a less furtive volume. “Hey, Bruce. What did you want?”

Without commenting on the implied admission of defeat, the detective pointed to the main display of the Batcomputer, where an image of Catwoman holding a sign was featured prominently.

“That’s her old costume, isn’t it? I would have thought it was an old photo, but, well… You both have grown.”

“I am aware,” not least of all because the ex-Boy Wonder no longer considered it appropriate to wear green, tight briefs. “So, what can you tell me besides the obvious?”

Nightwing frowned as he looked at the image of the thief standing atop the corner of a rooftop and looking invitingly at the camera over her shoulder. “Well, the first thing is that if I overlooked a single detail because I thought it was ‘obvious’ you would never let me hear the end of it,” Bruce grunted in fond approval—he was a master of expressive grunting, “so I will begin by saying that the long hair is either a wig or an extension—“

“It’s her natural hair. The color matches too well, and the way it drapes down her arched back is far too natural for an artificial wig—not to mention the luster. She probably saved it when she cut it, in case she needed to change her look.”

His ward stared at him with a weird focus. “And you had the exact color of her hair, the luster, and the way it drapes down her arched back memorized to perfection?”

“She’s a person of interest.”

“Oh, I bet…” Nightwing cleared his throat after muttering something which Bruce would quite likely have considered both insolent and irrelevant. “Moving on. The outfit is far less utilitarian than her current ‘catsuit,’ as it exposes her face a lot more—the mask portion doesn’t even conceal her eyes—her gloves don’t cover her fingertips, and… well. You know.” Dick gestured at the exposed, perfectly toned, yet still ample thighs that the long slit in the parted, almost-skirt portion of Selina Kyle’s old costume allowed the Batman to admire examine, then rudely interrupted said admirationexamination by continuing his dissertation. “It also has, for reasons known only to her and a very disturbed tailor, a green cape over her purple outfit.”

“Nothing wrong with capes.”

With the air of someone who did not want to rehash an old argument at three in the morning, his ward continued. “Costume aside, she has her old whip coiled, hanging on her wrist, she’s holding a sign in both hands that covers her lower back right above her hips, and she’s winking at the camera over her shoulder. The façade of the Gotham City Museum is shown to the left and up from her position; she is perched on the corner of the rooftop from the building across the street, and the photo seems to have been shot with a drone, as the angle would have the photographer over an empty street, and the framing obviously uses the rule of thirds to highlight Selina’s costume, suggesting it seeks to achieve a deliberate effect on the intended recipient, which, going by the contents of the sign, it’s clearly you—”

“Clearly me? Reason it out.”

Dick cocked an eyebrow. “Well, it says ‘April Seventeenth’ right there, in bold letters.”

Bruce nodded with barely restrained pride at his former sidekick. Of course Dick would get it, and he hadn’t even needed to double-check the date like he had; it was obvious the student was well on his way to surpassing the master. “Exactly: April seventeenth, or 417, the year Emperor Yao Hong surrendered to Emperor Wu of Liu Song.”

“… Right. Also, April seventeenth. Your birthday.”

“Yes, of course. The perfect distraction.”

“Of course… A distraction for what? Robbing the Gotham City Museum while they are throwing a gala to honor their largest donor—you—on account of, you know, your birthday?” Bruce scoffed at that.

“Obviously not, that is just a smokescreen. Seeing as the message clearly references Wu’s victory…” He trailed off meaningfully. Nightwing rolled his eyes before answering.

“Right. That would mean she’s targeting the Tiger of Sun En, the magician said to have been allied with Wu?”

Bruce tried not to beam. “Exactly! A statue of a tiger rendered in jade and cinnabar, which, coincidentally, will be shipped to the Gotham City Museum of Antiquities on that very same day!”

“And by ‘coincidentally’ you mean ‘because it’s the birthday of their largest donor.’ That is, you. Again.”

“Well, obviously. It’s all part of her scheme.”

“Obviously. Just to make sure we are on the same page, said scheme would be…?”

“Wearing her old costume, styling her hair like she did at the beginning of her career, sending me a message with a clue that actually conceals the real clue, and a plan to steal a cat-themed relic… It’s a declaration of war, a return to form. No more allies of convenience or ambivalent morality: the Cat wants me to play.”

Dick Grayson, former Boy Wonder, founder of the Titans, mentor and leader of heroes, looked at the man who was possibly the most brilliant detective the world had ever seen. Then, without saying a single word, leaned forward and tapped at the keyboard of the Batcomputer till the image of a tiger statuette appeared on the screen, stood up, and pointed at it.

“And she wants to do all that… by stealing this.”

“Obviously.”

“You keep using that word… Bruce, can you look at that and tell me why it doesn’t quite fit Selina’s usual targets?”

The tiger was sculpted in an easily recognizable Jin dynasty style, the body made of green jade (jadeite rather than nephrite, obviously), and the stripes covering about half of its surface rendered with vibrant red, encrusted cinnabar.

“I don’t see what you mean?” Uncertainty was an emotion rarely expressed by the Dark Knight. At least Clark wasn’t in range to rub it in.

“It’s tacky.”

Bruce turned towards the monitor once again. Admittedly, the details on the tiger’s face were grotesquely asymmetrical, one fang seemingly poking out through its lower jaw and its eyes maddeningly mismatched, while the pattern of the stripes made him wish tigers could indeed change them—not to mention the swirling color combination made him want to claw his eyes out and embrace the sweet release of blindness, or at least activate his night-vision lenses. Yes, ‘tacky’ seemed to be an apt descriptor.

The Dark Knight pondered this revelation, his furrowed brow uncovered by the cowl hanging off his shoulders, and came to an inescapable conclusion.

“Irrelevant.”

Dick looked alternatively between the computer and Bruce and finally sighed in defeat. “All right. So, what do you want me to do?”

“I have everything in Gotham covered, but I cannot discard she would attack from another angle. Just wanted you to be on guard in Blüdhaven.”

“Right… Just keep watch and be aware that Catwoman may—wait a moment, have you even tried calling her?”

“What? Why would she even pick up when the game’s afoot?”

“Holy literary references, Batman.”

Bruce scoffed. That had stopped being endearing years ago.

***

Days later, after not quite being scolded by Alfred for planning to skip his birthday gala at the Gotham City Museum (because the Batman didn’t get scolded, no matter what the queasy feeling at the bottom of his stomach had to say about that), Bruce Wayne crouched on a convenient gargoyle, keeping watch on a nominally abandoned warehouse at the edge of Blüdhaven’s docks. Dick had come through and informed him about a highly irregular shipment of catnip, of all things—not to mention some medicines that were obviously intended to care for the couple of black panthers that had vanished from Gotham’s Zoo the past week. Selina had not been subtle.

Keeping a giddy (and completely inappropriate) grin off his face, he shot his grappling hook and swung towards the roof of the building while long-practice allowed him to ignore the twinge of pain that speared his shoulder at the motion. As silent as a 210 pounds man could physically be, he alighted on his target and started looking for a point of entry. He quickly zeroed on a cracked skylight and discarded it as too obvious and probably trapped (curiosity got the best of him and he checked: indeed, there was a carefully concealed tripwire—he almost fist-bumped), then proceeded to dismantle what appeared to be a hastily repaired roof section that, with some maneuvering, allowed him passage to the rafters. A quick scan with the cowl’s batlenses HUD showed the expected level of electronic surveillance (cheap cameras connected to a central hub) but none of Catwoman’s possible surprises. Good. Selina rarely disappointed with her counter-measures—they were hardly so pedestrian.

He climbed down to the top of the security room and, after a quick rewiring, redirected the alarm and set the cameras’ recording on a loop. Then he dropped to the floor.

There were a few dilapidated shipping containers, but a cluster of eight of them, stacked in two four-wide rows on top of each other with no space in between, was the most likely target—which was confirmed when he saw they were shielded against both thermal and microwave imaging. Excellent.

He could have used explosives to breach the containers’ side, but, without a clear idea of what was inside, he didn’t want to take the risk. Still, a termite charge could have worked, even with the risk of starting a fire, but, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit he wanted to play this one by the rules. After less than a minute fiddling with a combination lock (363, Emperor Wu’s year of birth, a clear invitation), the door of the lower-leftmost container, the only one that hadn’t been welded shut, opened on well-oiled hinges.

It was everything he had wanted.

The door closed behind him with a resounding clamor that woke up the two black panthers that had been slumbering at the back of the enclosure formed by taking out the inner section of the containers. The walls had been covered with purple velvet drapes, and the floor in checkered marble tiles, while the roof had been decorated with dark wood panels, with only a sectioned-off room at the back of the impromptu arena not easily seen from where he was standing. He didn’t need to check to know the door was now locked and he was trapped with the two deadly felines. With a surge of adrenaline and a steady hand dropping to his batbelt utility belt, the Batman readied himself for a fight.

And kept being ready.

Not a single muscle twitched, his self-discipline keeping him perfectly aware of his environment, set to spring into motion at the slightest sign of danger as the panthers… Frolicked.

“Oh, come on!”

Bruce Wayne stomped towards the melanistic leopards that kept rolling around on the floor, pawing at the air and looking around with unfocused gazes that showed they were clearly stoned out of their minds. With catnip. They were even wearing belled collars! This outrage would not stand!

“Selina! What is the meaning of this?!”

“Oh? I thought it was obvious. 417. ‘No more allies of convenience or ambivalent morality.’”

The thief was now perched on top of the sectioned room inside the containers, her boot-clad calves dangling off its roof. She was wearing the same costume she had in the photo, with her long hair draped over her shoulder, covering her right side. And she sounded… angry?

“How did you… Dick.” If asked, Bruce Wayne would say he was just naming the most likely suspect. He would have been partially lying.

“Indeed. Dick.” If asked, Selina Kyle wouldn’t have bothered lying. “Congratulations on raising him as a great detective, by the way. He has learned the vital skill of using the fucking phone.”

“I told him it didn’t make sense to call you after—”

“After my ‘declaration of war.’ I know. I also know you made him describe the picture. The picture with me acting coy in my old costume while inviting you to celebrate your birthday. Do you have the slightest idea how humiliated I felt, you workaholic jerk?!”

“But, I mean… the Tiger of Sun En, 417… Everything lined up so perfectly, how could you expect me not to draw the obvious conclusion?”

Selina took out a remote controller from her cleavage and pointed at the wall behind the still frolicking panthers before pushing a button. The velvet drapes parted to show a gigantic screen covering the whole wall—a screen showcasing the Tiger of Sun En.

“That. You mean to tell me you really thought I would steal that.”

“It… fits your theme?” For the second time in recent memory, the Batman sounded uncertain. Again, he was glad Clark couldn’t hear him from outer space. At least, he hoped so; maybe now he could hear through the vacuum—it wouldn’t have been the first time.

“My theme.”

“You know? Feline? Antiquity? Artistic object associated with legends of mystical power?”

The thief arched an imperious eyebrow and pointed at the screen. “And could you tell me how it doesn’t quite fit said theme?”

“No?”

She began to massage her temples, eyes closed in sheer frustration. “It’s tacky.”

Bruce Wayne looked at the woman decked in green and purple, with a cat-eared mask and knee-high boots, and wisely decided not to remark on any perceived tackiness. “Still…”

“’Still’ nothing, Bruce, you are not this dense. Hell, you are not dense at all, you are the Detective, as the father of the colossal bitch keeps reminding you. What is even going on through that Sherlockian brain of yours?”

“I…” Bruce looked at the picture of the Tiger of Sun En as if it held the key to his current dilemma. After staring for too long into the hideously irregular pupils of something that could only be recognized as a feline because its shape was even less suited to any other creature, extant or mythical, his brain informed him that, if the key to his salvation laid in those jaws, he could go ahead and look for it without him, thank you very much. “I was just… hopeful.”

“Hopeful? That I would betray you?”Selina’s voice couldn’t mask the hurt behind the indignation. He had really messed this up, hadn’t he?

“No! Sorry… Sorry, if you would let me explain—”

“Why the Hell do you think I have set up this whole thing?”

‘Because you are far too much into theatrics to waste the chance,’ Bruce Wayne did not answer. “Right, well… I am just too stressed out.”

“And having a fight with me is relaxing?”

“Gods above, yes!” Selina looked taken aback at his earnestness. Good, maybe he could salvage this. “Just, just think of the stakes. Do you realize what happens if I go against you and lose?”

“That I get some nice loot?”

“Exactly! No circus full of orphans burns down to the tune of ‘pop goes the weasel,’ no demented psychiatrist replaces me as Batman, no reject from the WWE leaves me paralytic, no world-ending threat finally manages to do what they try almost every other week—”

“Whoa there, a world-ending threat wins if you lose? What about the Justice League? Aren’t they supposed to handle those?”

“Yes, and who do you think those morons have picked as their tactical commander?”

“Well, yes, but aren’t you doing that behind the scenes? You know, analyzing the situation, deploying assets, finding out weaknesses... the things you are good at?”

“I. Have. Punched. Darkseid.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as the charged words resounded in the nearly empty space, the name of the genocidal god echoing ominously as if he was being summoned from beyond the void between the stars. Selina cleared her throat.

“Did it work?”

Bruce paused and fidgeted in what those who didn’t know the Dark Knight’s reputation may have equivocally termed as embarrassment.

“Yes.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Very.”

“I mean, what kind of god can be punched by you and remain a credible planetary threat? No offense, darling, but no matter how skilled you are, it’s not like you can go a single round against Clark.”

“Well…”

“You are shitting me.” Selina’s tone was as flat as she wasn’t.

“It’s ludicrous, right? I mean, he can see me from orbit, hit me with perfectly modulated heat vision in every single one of my nerve endings and incapacitate me without any kind of collateral, so why the Hell does he even get in range of my kryptonite knuckleduster?”

“Why the Hell do you even have a kryptonite knuckleduster?”

“Because the moron keeps getting in range of it!”

At the perfectly reasonable reply, Selina went back to massaging her temples. Bruce commiserated with the feeling, but the ceramic plates in his latest cowl didn’t allow him the same relief.

“So, to summarise, you are under so much stress and crushing expectations, surrounded by physical gods and planetary threats that somehow expect you to be not only on their level but to also be above them… That you thought it would be relaxing to have a go at me like in the old times.

“Ah… Pretty much.”

Selina sighed and stood up on the roof of the enclosed section. With visible reticence, she fished yet another remote control from her cleavage and pointed upwards as she exclaimed, in a theatrical voice: “It seems you have caught up to meow, Batman, but it won’t be so easy to recover the Tiger of Sun En! A cat rarely lets its prey get away”” With that, she depressed the button and a wooden panel slid off, letting a miniature cage dangle from the roof. In the cage, the statuette seemed to prowl the confines of its prison.

Bruce stared, mouth not agape only by sheer martial arts conditioning. “How…?”

“Substituted in transit with Dick running interference on your systems—the one in the museum is a replica. Pity the boy is usually so law-abiding, he would have made a delightful cat-burglar.”

“You blackmailed him into it.”

“Well, obviously, but what Barbara doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Dazzled, the Dark Knight looked up in awe at the woman. “You already knew everything? You put this up for… me?”

Slightly uncomfortable, Selina looked off to the side. “It wasn’t that hard to piece together, and I still have my contacts from my heist days. I mean, it’s not the birthday I had planned for you, but you seemed like you would… prefer this.”

“Selina, I… I don’t know…” His voice caught with emotion, the Batman struggled to find the words he wanted to say. Luckily for him, Catwoman interrupted him: “We have been talking for seven minutes and thirty-three seconds.”

For a moment, Bruce didn’t know how to process the apparent non-sequitur, but a rustling at his back suddenly had him connect the dots: the duration of a dosage of catnip on a melanistic leopard. She had timed their conversation.

He had never felt so awestruck in his life.

Ignoring Selina definitely not muttering that ‘most men would have been happy with a birthday blowjob,’ he spun on his heels just in time to catch a leaping panther behind its open jaws with his scalloped forearm, the momentum of his spin enough to make the large feline crash to the ground by his side. Its more cautious partner had started circling towards his right, so he took a quick backstep to keep them both in his sight as he bent his knees and changed his guard to a low block, his right hand palming a batarang as his left stretched forward.

The first panther quickly recovered, cracking its jaw from side to side to get rid of the lingering numbness of his nerve-strike, then lost patience and darted forward, swiping at his forward leg with its claws. Bruce couldn’t help an amused grin at the irony as he quickly shifted to a cat stance, his forward leg free of weight and maneuverable enough to bend above the attack and return it with a devastating kick to the other side of the panther’s jaw.

An aborted yowl died an early death as the black feline’s eyes rolled backward and it fell down, the flow of blood to its brain briefly interrupted by the blow. Its partner showed it was the smarter of the two, taking advantage of the brief window where Batman’s leg was stretched to close in and use its body weight to push him to the ground. That was when Bruce used his palmed batarang. The one with an inbuilt taser.

The open jaws of the panther snapped in front of his face as its body shook with the current of the thematic weapon, Bruce holding its head back with a hand on its neck. Victory was all but assured, the two felines already subdued without any serious injuries. That was when he heard the hissing.

A cloud of grey mist burst out of the belled collar of his foe, the chemical smell sweet and easily recognizable as sevoflurane. The anesthetic gas was already dulling his reactions, but he dropped his batarang and whipped his arm to get the adrenaline injector stored in his belt—just as he heard the familiar snap of a whip and his movement was arrested.

He had just enough time to drop his sight and see Catwoman’s weapon snared around his wrist before unconsciousness claimed him.

***

Waking up from an anesthetic was never a seamless experience, though Batman was practiced enough with the process to have had it down to an artform. He went at it systematically, checking down items in order of priority:

- Breathing impeded? No. He was also not gagged, so his life wasn’t in immediate peril, but he was likely in a soundproofed cell.

- Mobility restricted? Yes, both wrists and ankles were held by what appeared to be leather cuffs.

- Equipment available? Possibly, he appeared to still be wearing his suit, so—wait a second…

Dropping the pretense of unconsciousness, his eyes shot open and he saw what his other senses had been telling him: he was wearing his batsuit. His old batsuit. The costume he had worn at the start of his career, as he set out to forge a legend that had traveled around the globe, whispering of dark retribution to criminals and evildoers, and of hope to those victims who had no other recourse but rumors of a Dark Knight. The costume that, some time-travellers had told him, remained engraved in the minds of those who would live centuries from now.

It was mortifying.

What had he been thinking?! The damn thing was just skin-tight, grey fabric! It didn’t even have ceramic inserts, never mind his current kevlar-nomex weave! This was worse than Dick’s briefs!

“So, finally woke up, Batmweow?”

Selina’s playful purr could elicit plenty of emotions from the Dark Knight, even if curiosity and confusion were often chief among them. In this case, a torrent of questions rushed through his mind, but, with the cool blood that characterized him, he settled for the most urgent ones.

“Why am I wearing my old clothes? Why do you have my old clothes? What have you been doing with my old clothes?”

Selina, for some unfathomable reason, looked taken aback at his vehemence. “I… stole them from the Batcave in preparation for this? You know, from all those creepy mannequins you have lying around as if you were jealous of Superman’s robots?”

“Ah. That makes sense. Yes.” And he was not jealous of the super-robots. He had an Alfred.

“What—I am afraid to ask, but what did you think was going on that got you so frantic?”

“Have you met Harley?”

“Oh. Point. Also, I am now slightly offended.”

“Sorry, gasses always get me twitchy. So, now that that misunderstanding is out of the way, could you tell me about the actual reason I am wearing my old costume while strapped to a surgical table?”

As her only answer, Catwoman, still in her previous getup, just raised a condescending eyebrow, which prompted him to examine his surroundings. He seemed to still be in the same enclosure he had fallen asleep in, the velvet drapes disguising the interior of the shipping containers, but four of the wooden panels covering the roof had slid away to show lasers mounted on robotic arms, while the gigantic screen now showed him from above, strapped to an old-style operating table suspended from the ceiling by four chains, one connected to each of his extremities, and those chains… dangled him over a pit where the two panthers prowled. He was almost overcome with emotion.

“You… you have built me a deathtrap?”

Selina cleared her throat and dramatically threw an arm to the side to send her cape flaring. “Ah, the mighty Batman, finally caught in my mousetrap! I am sure your cunning mind has already figured out my dastardly designs but, nonetheless, you won’t be able to free yourself from your restrains before those lasers cut your chains down, and send you plumetting to your death at the jaws of those you have already bested! After all, cats don’t like it when you take away their… toys.”

He couldn’t help it: he gaped. Selina stood there, still in her dramatic pose even though the cape had already settled, as if waiting for a reaction. In awed gratitude, he whispered: “This is all I ever wanted.” Catwoman flushed in pleasure.

“Of course, my heroic foil, I won’t just go away to let you struggle against your restrains in solitude.” She wouldn’t? That was unusual, most villains seemed quite bashful in these circumstances. “Oh no, I will stay very close, to make sure you meet your end without any daring escapes at the last minute,” she winked, and his heart did strange things at the way she cocked her hip. “In fact, I think I will be right there to witness the demise of the Batman. Such an icon deserves nothing less,” and just like that, she snapped her whip to snare the chain closest to his right arm and jumped up, dropping up on top of him with a somersault that did delightful things to her bouncier assets.

He was still caught up contemplating her legs and the way they barely disappeared into her split skirt when she knelt, straddling his hips with a saucy smirk. “So, ready to start the festivities, my oldest nemesis?”

With lips drier than they had been in recent memory, Bruce answered: “I am always ready for you, Cat.”

Selina bit her lower lip at that, almost breaking character as her hips pressed downwards as if to check on said readiness—a futile endeavor: he may have been overly trusting in his initial designs of the batsuit, but he had never gone out without a protective cup. The Wayne legacy would not be so recklessly endangered. Still, maybe he should design an alternative that could account for unanticipated… circumstances. The cup was starting to feel far too restrictive.

“Then show me,” Selina whispered. And Bruce gulped.

With the same theatricality she had already displayed, she fished out yet anotherremote control from her cleavage (which, granted, was ample enough to warrant its own alphabetized inventory system, but he felt it unfair that after such displays she still ribbed him about the capacity of his batbelt). With the press of its single button and a crackle of ionized air, four red beams of light converged on a single link of the chain attached to the cuff holding his left wrist. Seeing as the metal had yet to visibly heat, he may have a few minutes before he was dangling by a single chain, at which time he—

Selina, as was her wont, derailed his train of thought by doing something completely unexpected. In this specific instance, she was dragging the sharp steel nail of her right index finger below his cowl, as if searching for the seam of his suit. “Are you looking to unmask me, fiend?” he managed to ask without dropping character.

“Hmmm, that’s tempting, and I am not that good at resisting temptation, my Dark Knight, but no. I think I would rather have you keep your secrets for today’s festivities… though this much is no secret for anyone with eyes to see.” And just like that, she dragged her finger down the line of his sternum, the elastic fabric of his costume parting like curtains on opening night as her nail barely scratched his skin, just enough to leave a line of reddening sensation. The look Selina gave his chest could only be described as predatory, and her licking her lips wasn’t helping that impression.

“I see you haven’t waxed,” she commented without abandoning her ogling.

“It’s not a… priority. What are you doing, Cat?”

“Well, as I already told you, I am here to witness the fall of the Dark Knight, so I got myself a front-row seat,” she rubbed her perfectly toned behind on his lap to emphasize the point. “Of course, you know how cats aren’t known for their patience, so I was thinking I would… make things harder for you. Personally.”

He suppressed the impulse to gulp, took a second to compose his most stern expression, and began to reply: “You will find I am not so-hn!”

Selina, amid peppering the irritated line of his skin with lingering kisses, looked up from where she was now nestled on his chest. “So easily distracted, I believe you meant to say. But that’s the point of this game, Batman: can your iron will withstand my distractions and meddling as you try to escape my trap, or will you succumb to your baser instincts? Oh, and gravity, of course.”

He grunted, but Selina hadn’t been trained in the intricacies of grunt language as Dick had, so he elaborated. “Won’t you fall with me?”

“Maybe I will, Bat,” she nuzzled his nipple, and a bolt of sensation shot through him, “but we cats always fall on our feet.”

As if on cue, his left arm jerked with the weight of the chain, now finally cut through, as the clattering metal almost masked the mechanical whir of the lasers being pointed at the one connected to his right arm. He had wasted a fourth of his time getting distracted. Selina was certainly poised to win their little game.

“Oh, it looks like time is getting away from you, my Knight. Seems like my little addition to our dance is working just as intended,” she said with a little giggle. Yes, Bruce didn’t need her to explain it to him

With an effort of will, Batman went through a mental inventory of the tricks available to him in his old equipment. The leather cuffs were form-fitting and with almost no give… but there may be enough of it. An almost arcane gesture released the serrated blades hidden along the scalloped fins of his gloves and he started working his wrists in a way that suggested he was struggling not to react to Selina’s attentions. Given the enthusiastic combination of licks, kisses, purring and caresses his chest was being subjected to, he found it easy to sell the deception.

“God, I can never get tired of the way your muscles just seem to dance under your skin. Do you even know how hard it was to keep my focus the first times we fought? It was like a Greek statue on fetish gear had decided to stalk me over moonlit rooftops. I felt like a very conflicted Daphne.”

“Youare complaining about me being distracting? Do you have the slightest idea what you do to me every time I find you in a new outfit?” He couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his tone.

With a wink that could make a Tamaranian blush, Selina’s hand traveled under his belt. “I have some notion.”

Bruce grunted. “I knew you did that on purpose.”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself, it’s not like all my fashion choices revolve around making this hard,” she undid the straps on his protective cup and grasped his member with a dexterity honed on combination locks, and he grunted once again. This time, going by her far-too-wide grin, she got the meaning. “Just like… forty percent?”

“All that, and I still have my belt on. Admirable.”

“Well, I was trying to be sporting about it, but if it bothers you so much…” With a flick of her wrist, the latch on batutility belt came undone and shortly after his precious supplies came tumbling down to the pit below. A panther yowled in pain and Selina looked apologetic.

“He will be fine.”

“I know, it’s just…” The second chain subjected to the lasers groaned ominously and Catwoman barely had the time to wrap her legs around his waist before it snapped.

Which sent them tumbling down.

Time seemed to slow down as Bruce saw her frantically grab onto him, as the surgical table tipped over and jerked to an abrupt stop when the other two chains snapped tight, the almost soothing rocking motion the only trace of their abrupt change in circumstances. Far too open eyes met his own as Selina clung to him, long, wavy hair swaying upside down in front of him, her ample cleavage smushed against his bare (save for her saliva) chest.

With a muffled clearing of her throat, she reprised her role and purred against his lips: “Two down, two to go. Half-time is over, Bat.”

For a brief moment, he feared tearing the batsuit apart with the surge of his erection, then Selina’s shuffling reminded him in a very physical way that he was already out of his pants. He mercilessly crushed the absurd upswelling of gratitude.

“Then I guess this is when the gloves come off?” He hadn’t meant anything by that, just a way to keep the ball rolling, to keep her from noticing how he had steadily been sawing at his cuffs whenever her attention wandered. Then he saw her smiling like the proverbial cat who ate the canary (that is, like she did approximately 87% of the time, if his records were accurate—and they were), and she daintily dangled something in front of his face. Something purple. Something wet. Something that, at the best of times, barely protected her modesty.

He grunted, hoping it was expressive enough to get his point across. Judging by the widening of her smile, and her letting the piece of fabric fall (to an indignant, rather than pained, yowl from the pit below), she got the message.

“See, I thought it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to the Dark Knight if he just had to wait lying down as things progressed, so I came up with further challenges to overcome before the trap is sprung.”

“Challenges such as…?”

“Well, in this case, just one…” She clung with all her strength with her legs and the one hand clutching his cowl as the free one traveled down his body and positioned him at the entrance of a warm, wet place that he had never admitted out loud he tended to miss horribly whenever he had to abstain from visiting her, and then she whispered against his ear with scorching hot breath: “Try not to cum, Bat.”

A twist of her hips, and he was inside her.

One of them, maybe both, moaned. He didn’t know. Neither cared.

“So, any prospects on… escaping?” Her face was flushed, her grin perennial. He kissed her as a plan started brewing.

“I take that’s… hmmm… a no?”

He strained against his cuffs, trying to clutch her against him on reflex, and she looked at him with amusement. He made as to reply, when she undulated her whole body in that particular way that more than earned her moniker, and he swallowed the words while desperately trying to reach her lips.

She whispered against them, her breath sending shivers down his spine as her hips languidly swayed up and down. “I think you are enjoying this.”

He raised an eyebrow, the gesture lost beneath his cowl. “I am straight, and you are you.”

She chuckled. “Always the flatterer. No, I mean this: being my captive, struggling under my control. I think this is one of your many, many secrets.”

He swallowed, her words as stimulating as everything else in the situation, an affected shrug masking yet another sawing motion against his cuffs. “It has… a certain appeal.”

“Oh?” She nibbled his ear. “Would that have something to do with all that responsibility you are carrying on those Atlasean shoulders?”

“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, Selina.”

“If not me, who else?”

The thought of Hugo Strange almost made his erection retract. Thankfully, he had other things to focus on. Plenty of things.

Like his cuffs finally snapping.

The sound tore her gaze away from his eyes, and a bit of disappointment slipped through her façade, anticipating his escape and the end of their game.

So it should have come as a genuine surprise when, rather than reaching for any of the tools hidden throughout his suit for precisely this very situation (though he would admit, just this once, that they wouldn’t have been for this exact situation), he instead wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him.

She looked back into his eyes, disoriented. “Aren’t you going to try to… escape?”

“You issued a challenge, Cat.”

For a moment, she looked dumbfounded, then elated, and she licked her lips. “And you rarely back down from a challenge, do you?”

He smirked. “Not when I can win.” And he kissed her, his hand roughly tangling with her hair as they moaned into each other.

Of course, his other hand was also free to act. It took Selina several seconds to realize he had uncovered her breasts, but when she did, she didn’t seem inclined to protest.

They remained like that for several seconds, just lost in their kiss while their hands explored bodies they had intimately known for years, before Bruce noticed something amiss.

“Your hair…”

“My hair?” Selina asked, eyes cloudy, unfocused.

“It’s not a wig.”

It took a second for her to understand before she burst into giggling. “Let me guess: you thought I had saved my hair when I cut it off in case I needed a disguise?”

“Well… yes.”

“Not a bad idea, darling, but… I have Zatanna’s number.”

“You... You are using the world’s most powerful sorcerer… as a hairdresser.” It should have been a question. It wasn’t.

“To be fair, you are using the universe’s most powerful everything as a punching bag.”

He smirked. “Guess we both have expensive tastes.”

She giggled. “You certainly aren’t a cheap date. You don’t know how much those lasers cost nowa—” The operating table lurched once again as said lasers cut through the third chain, their whirring signaling their targeting the last one. Selina shrugged. “Well, guess it’s about time to wrap this up.”

Bruce nibbled on her ear. “I don’t think so.”

“What?”

He gripped her ass, pushing her against him as he ground their pelvises together, still inside her, still hard, and she let out a sharp gasp. “I said I don’t think so.”

“Honey, this is all very—hn!—flattering, but we don’t have much time before—”

“I don’t care. You challenged me.” He thrust his hips, her wetness allowing him unimpeded passage, and she couldn’t help answering his movements.

“Look, I know you have an ego the size of the Watchtower, but we can just continue this later—” He silenced her, his tongue invading her mouth with an eagerness she tried not to reciprocate, and he started fucking her in earnest, their hips slapping loudly against each other as the table started swaying like a pendulum at their earnest movements.

“Bruce... Oh God, why are you making this so hard… Fine! I didn’t want to do this!” Swiftlty, impossibly, she took yet another remote control out of her cleavage. The very cleavage he had uncovered and thoroughly groped moments ago. The Batman was almost stunned for too long, and only conditioned response reflexes allowed him to slap it out of her hand. She looked at him, aghast. “Why?!”

“Supervillain. Trap. Remote control. Logic,” he grunted in answer, his exertion too great to form a complete sentence.

“Oh, for… You impossible man, I was going to turn the lasers off!” He noticed she still hadn’t stopped moving around his member, and his lips twitched upward. “What’s that grin for? You have been wasting time rather than escaping and we both are about to fall into a pit with two black panthers. Oh fuck—stop trying to shut me up with your cock!”

“I think you are enjoying this.”

She looked at him aghast, the blush on top of her breasts and the sheen of glittering sweat only highlighting how attractive he found it to occasionally get one over on her.

He continued, “The loss of control, the thrill of danger mixed with the reassurance of my presence. I think it is one of your many secrets.”

“Don’t you fucking psychoanalyze me.” She rebutted automatically.

“If not me, who else?” He answered, with rare cheekiness.

“Oh, go fuck yourself…”

“And why would I do that,” he grunted, “when I could fuck you?”

She let out an embarrassing mix of a moan and a purr and melted into his arms, accepting the situation and, for once, just letting him handle her however he pleased. He obliged, the strength of his thrusts increasing even as he felt the strain on his ankles from holding both his weight and Selina’s for so long. Finally, after a well-timed movement of his pelvis, the lasers cut off the last chain holding them aloft. And they sailed through the air.

In a diagonal trajectory that saw them miss the lip of the pit by inches.

He loved it when a plan came together.

He curled his body around Selina’s protectively, the table smashing first against the ground, bleeding off their momentum as it broke. They rolled on the tiled marble, his body ending up above hers as she stared up at him in wonder. “You… you built up momentum to make us sway… by fucking me?”

He could have answered with a smirk, with a cocky one-liner, with a brag. He didn’t. Instead, he grasped those thighs that had been driving him insane for years and hooked her knees on his shoulders.

“Bruce?”

He kissed her, and he drove himself as deep inside her as he could.

Selina could barely move, barely do anything but lie under him and take everything he decided to give her. Her disheveled hair spread under her like a shadowed halo, and he couldn’t help the lovestruck comparison to a dark angel, fallen just for him.

Well, if that was the case, the least he could do was give her something worth falling for.

His lips let go of hers just in time for her to cry out out her pleasure as he impossibly increased his pace. He felt her quivering around him, as if desperately asking him for something, as if begginghim.

He held back, heroically, stoically, like only a man who had unparalleled mastery of himself could.

For about two seconds.

Then his roar joined her scream and he felt himself release inside her, liquid heat pouring out of him in unending waves of mind-shattering ecstasy till he had no more left to give, till he felt empty of everything except the warmth he only felt when he had her between his arms. He fell on top of her, and, with arms limp with exhaustion that was only partly physical, he felt her returning his embrace.

They laid there for what felt like hours.

“I love you.”

“What.”

“You know, I…” she looked up at him bashfully, her mascara uncharacteristically smudged out of her careful lines. “I think I never told you. I know you know, you always do, but I… wanted to tell you. On your birthday.”

He swallowed despite his suddenly dry mouth. “That… that may be the best present I have ever gotten.” He tried to smile shyly. He managed.

Her flushed cheeks crinkled in a merry grin. “Well, I am glad you… like your present. It should be a good consolation prize.”

“Consolation?”

“You know. For losing.”

A surge of indignation rushed up as he stared down at her. “You came first!”

“Well, duh, can you blame me? But no, I was talking about failing to escape from my death trap.”

“But… I am alive?” He asked, like he expected her to somehow contradict him.

“Petite morte, Bruce.”

He groaned. “I am so glad you didn’t teach Dick how to banter. He had enough bad influences without adding… that.”

She chuckled. “Hey, as far as I can tell, the boy is beautifully messed up. Just like his father.”

He smiled and laid on top of her, her legs relaxing from his shoulders as she made herself comfortable wrapped around both their capes.

“Hey, Selina?” He murmured, slightly drowsy.

“Yes?”

“I love you too.”

Silently, she took off his cowl and kissed the top of his head, hugging it against her chest as she looked at the fake ceiling with a marveled smile.

“I know.”

***

Epilogue:

The Batman’s birthday came and went, most of it spent in the company of Selina Kyle, who was more affectionate than she usually allowed herself to be. That, of course, didn’t mean that crime had stopped in Gotham City, as that would have been recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls as a sign of the end of times. But, for once, Bruce allowed himself to take a backseat and allow his many allies to take up the slack. One very conflicted Helena Bertinelli was one of those chosen for the task.

“Huntress? You have been staring at the horizon for close to ten minutes. Are you having a stroke?”

Helena tried to think of a coherent answer. As she found herself unable to, she offered what had actually been on her mind since the night before, for reasons she was unable to understand. “Oracle? You ever have the feeling someone’s walked over your grave?”

Barbara hesitated. “Yes?”

“Right, of course. So, is there a name for the reverse of that?”