DC – I am Batman

Alfred told him with a glass of water and an expression.

He was in the cave running Julia's latest intelligence through the mapping software, cross-referencing Falcone shipping routes with Bertinelli's targets, trying to figure out which pier Helena would hit next so he could be somewhere near it when she did. The work was good. The kind that used the whole brain and left no room for the other things he was carrying, which was why he'd been down here since six.

Alfred descended the stairs with a glass of water on a tray and set it on the console and stood there.

"Thanks."

Alfred didn't leave.

Bruce looked up. Alfred's face was doing exactly what Alfred's face always did, which was nothing, except the nothing had a specific quality tonight. The eyebrows were at their default position. The mouth was neutral. The posture was correct. And yet the entire composition communicated there is a person upstairs and you should deal with it.

"Who."

"Miss Zatara. She arrived without calling ahead. She walked past me, through the foyer, through the kitchen, and directly to the terrace. I offered tea. She said, and I quote, 'Not yet, Alfred.'"

"Not yet" meant she had business to handle before the tea. Zatanna never refused tea unless she was nervous or angry or about to do a thing she'd been thinking about for a while.

He saved the map file. Closed the laptop. Drank half the water. Alfred was still standing there with the empty tray and the expression.

"How did she look?"

"Determined."

He went upstairs.

The terrace was where they'd always ended up.

When she was seven and he was six and Giovanni brought her to the charity galas, they'd sat on this railing and she'd shown him the coin trick. He'd left for training at fifteen and she'd stood here and watched him walk to the car and hadn't cried, which was worse. She'd brought Thai food here when he came back and sat with her feet up and talked for three hours about a pub in London the size of a kitchen table and a child who'd caught snowflakes she'd made from nothing.

She was sitting on the railing now. Legs dangling over the garden side, feet bare, shoes on the stone behind her. Black jeans, a white t-shirt, her leather jacket folded next to her shoes. Her hair was down and the evening light was turning the black into something with blue edges and she was holding a playing card between two fingers, turning it over and over in the absent way her hands moved when the rest of her was thinking hard.

He opened the terrace door. She heard it. Didn't turn.

He walked to the railing and leaned against it beside her. Close enough that her knee was near his hip. The garden below was green and overgrown where the groundskeeper had missed a week, and the city was visible past the treeline, Gotham going orange as the sun dropped.

"Martha would kill you for sitting up there."

"Martha loves me." She flipped the card. Ace of hearts. Her fingers were steady but the card was moving faster than necessary. "She'd kill you for letting me."

"Fair."

The card kept turning. He watched her hands. Those hands had been on his temples three weeks ago when her magic touched his mind and found what he'd been carrying for a decade. They'd shaken when she pulled them away. Those fingers had sent three texts at 2 AM and then a rabbit emoji and then silence.

Three weeks. He'd given her three weeks and she'd done a show at the Iceberg Lounge and texted him rabbit emojis and not once come to the apartment where the books had floated and the glass had cracked and she'd kissed him and told him to leave. He'd let her process because that was what she needed and he knew Zatanna well enough to know that pushing would break a thing he couldn't fix.

And now she was on his railing with bare feet and an ace of hearts and she looked like she'd come here to do a thing she was still deciding how to start.

"I've been thinking," she said.

"Dangerous."

"Shut up." She stopped the card. Held it flat between her fingers. Looked at him for the first time since he'd come outside. Her eyes were brown with gold flecks and the evening light was in them and she was beautiful and her jaw was set the way it set before she went onstage. "I've been thinking about what I felt. When the magic touched your mind."

His chest did a thing he didn't control.

"You wanted me." She said it flat. Direct. Zatanna's voice when she was done performing and the real person was talking. "Not as a friend. Not as the girl who's known you since I was six and used to steal cookies from your kitchen and slept on your floor after my dad's shows. Me. You wanted me."

He didn't deny it. There was nothing to deny. She'd been inside his head. She'd felt the ten years of it, the whole structural load, and there was no version of this conversation where he pretended she hadn't.

"Yeah."

She looked at the card in her hand. Turned it over once more. Put it in her jacket pocket. When her hand came back it was empty and she was gripping the railing edge and her knuckles were tight.

"I went home that night and three books were still on the floor where I'd thrown them and the glass in the kitchen was still cracked and I sat on my couch and I could still feel it. All of it. What was in your head. It was..." She trailed off. Looked at the garden. Her jaw worked. "It wasn't what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know. Attraction. Want. The usual stuff." She shook her head. "It wasn't the usual stuff, Bruce. Years of it. Layered. Under everything. Like you'd built the rest of your life on top of it and just kept going."

He looked at the garden. A bird was sitting on the wall, a sparrow or something close, picking at the mortar between the bricks. The groundskeeper really had missed a week. The ivy was out of control.

"I need to know if that's still true," she said. "When there's no magic involved."

He turned back to her. She was looking at him. Sitting on his railing in a white t-shirt with bare feet and her eyes were wet and steady and she was asking him a question she already knew the answer to because she'd felt it in his head three weeks ago.

"Zee."

"Don't." She held up a hand. "Don't be gentle about it. Just say it."

"It's still true."

Her breath came out. Short. Like she'd been holding it since she sat down. Her hands left the railing and she swung her legs over and she was standing on the terrace in front of him and her feet were bare on the stone and she was shorter without shoes and she stepped close and her hands found his chest.

Her fingers were warm through his shirt. Her hands always ran warm but tonight the warmth had a pulse to it, the same low hum her magic carried when she was emotional.

"The last time I kissed you, a lamp broke and three books flew off the shelf and I panicked," she said. She was looking at his chest. Her fingers spread flat, feeling his heartbeat. "I panicked because I've wanted this since I was fifteen and I didn't know what to do when I got it."

"And now?"

She looked up. Her eyes were wet and the gold flecks were bright and her mouth was set in the line that preceded either a joke or a confession and he couldn't tell which one was coming.

"Now I know what to do." She rose onto her toes. Her hands slid up his chest to his shoulders. Her face was close and her breath was warm and it tasted like chamomile and she always drank chamomile when she was nervous and her mouth was right there. "I'm going to kiss you. And this time I'm not going to stop. And if a lamp breaks, a lamp breaks."

She kissed him.

Soft first. The same question as last time, lips barely touching, her fingers curling into his shirt at the shoulders. He stayed still. Let her set the pace. Let her choose the speed.

She chose faster.

Her mouth pressed harder and her hands pulled and she tilted her head and the kiss deepened and she tasted like chamomile and magic and underneath both of those she tasted like Zee, specific and warm and unmistakable. Her hands went from his shoulders to his hair and her fingers curled and pulled and she made a sound into his mouth, the same small raw sound from last time, and this time she didn't flinch from it.

He kissed her back. His hands went to her waist and she was warm through the thin t-shirt, warmer than normal, and the hum of her magic was building under her skin. He pulled her closer and she pressed against him and her body fit against his and she made another sound, deeper, and her hips shifted.

A card fell out of her jacket pocket. The ace of hearts, face-up on the stone. Neither of them looked at it.

His mouth moved to her jaw. Her neck. The spot below her ear where her pulse was fast and where she'd gasped last time and she gasped again, shorter, needier, and her nails dug into his scalp. He kissed down the tendon to her collarbone and her breath broke and her magic sparked. A tiny pop of light where her fingers touched his neck, static and warm, and she felt it happen and for a second her body tensed.

"Don't stop," she said. Her voice was low and rough and didn't sound like the stage. "Please don't stop."

He didn't stop.

He kissed her mouth again and her spine pressed into his hands as they slid under the hem of her t-shirt and her skin was hot and smooth and his palms spread against her lower back and she shivered and pressed closer and her hips rocked against his and she could feel him getting hard and she didn't pull away. Her hand came down from his hair and pressed flat against his chest over his heart and the magic hummed louder and a light in the garden went on and off by itself.

She laughed against his mouth. Breathless. "That was me. Sorry."

"I don't care."

"I know." She kissed him again. Harder. Both hands back in his hair, pulling, and his hands on her bare back under the shirt and her magic singing in her skin and the evening going dark around them and Gotham glowing orange past the garden wall.

She pulled back. Half an inch. Her forehead against his. Her breathing uneven. Her eyes open, brown and gold, close enough to count the flecks.

"I'm not going to stop," she said. "I told you."

"I heard you."

"I mean tonight. I'm not going to stop tonight. I'm not going to panic and I'm not going to throw books and I'm not going to tell you to leave." She kissed the corner of his mouth. "Take me inside."

The ace of hearts was still face-up on the stone. The garden light flickered once more and settled. Her bare feet were on the cold terrace and her body was warm against his and ten years of friendship was still there, underneath everything, holding the rest of it up.

"Okay," he said.

He took her inside.