You Know What,
You know what,
we flock together might be a wrap this season. I wanna take time to prepare act 2. So for the remainder of the year, I’ll focus on other wips and sprinkle in some snapshot extra bits of dove and bruce’s friendship prior kidnapping.
yea. that’s what I’ll do.
More Posts from Sukunasstomachtongue
BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (2022) dir. Ryan Coogler | Official Teaser
"I Know What They're Thinking."
I'm not sure if I want to call this part 7 or part 6.5, regardless I'm posting it. I feel like I say this every time, but it picks up after this. Inspiration comes and goes these days, so yall just gon have to bear with me.
Series Masterlist
Bruce Wayne x Dove (black OC)
Rating: PG-13; warnings: obsessive Bruce Wayne, sneaky Bruce Wayne, chipped nails, women's clothing sizing mention, cursing, barely edited.
Taglist[OPEN]: @prettyvintageafternoon @zennydaye @lalaooopsie @leahnicole1219 @ctrllovre
Her nails had been chipping since that night she got arrested. Dove couldn’t tell you when it first started. Maybe that night in the cold rain, pressed between the unregulated vigilante and the rough asphalt of the city. Maybe during the unconscious hours that followed that, when her body was moved to the soulless gray precinct. Maybe when damaged palms repeatedly smacked the steel table, straining to convey her innocence to the detective.
Maybe afterward, when Dove had been rudely escorted to a cell, crammed already with other convicted bodies. When she had very little room to breathe, even less to turn and gather her bearings without hearing some sob story or boast fest. Perhaps a chip of mauve nail polish flaked off when that erratic woman stalked through the cell like a predator, grasped her hand to offer her a proposition.
There were infinite possibilities when her nail polish began chipping, but Dove knew for sure that after her mild mind break, the polish had shed like a snake's skin. With it went her armor. Dove felt out of control, the itch she struggled with for so long came roaring back, filling her head with roaring thunder.
It made her restless.
She couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Everywhere she went, Dove could swear she smelled the sweet slightly nauseating odor of laughing gas and sweat. It made it hard to stay focused, and her an easy target for the police. Quickly the young woman earned the title ‘insubordinate’. Dove never knew loneliness like this before.
But then Bruce answered her call. And for a moment that dark feeling faded away.
She wasn’t prepared for it to return tenfold three months later.
***
Dove couldn’t help but fiddle with the buttons on the jacket he draped over her shoulders. The way it settled on her tense shoulders like a blanket soothed a toddler, it carried an inexplicable sense of security. The warmth of his body had remained trapped in the silk-lined fabric, thawing her from the horrors of being confined like an animal.
A firm hand clasped the roundness of her shoulder, dragging her into the moment. The bustling movements and repetitive barking that characterized the police station rammed into her all at once.
Her grip tightened on the button caught between her fingertips.
“Ready to go?” No. Yes. Would the evening sun burn her after being deprived of it for so long?
“Yes.” Bruce led her through the corridor, out the door, and to the cherry red convertible that let all the sight-having citizens of Gotham know who was gracing their dangerous streets. The corvette played the perfect chariot for the golden Prince of Gotham, and Dove, in all her times of riding passenger, had never felt more unworthy.
“Dove, are you okay?” Bruce watched her, her sullen attitude polluting the air around her. He hated seeing her like this, scared and broken. Luckily he knew how to fix it, but it would have to wait until the prerequisites were met. “You can talk to me, I won’t judge you.”
“I just,” her dam began to break. “Don’t know what to say. I-I don't know how to thank you. This was, you, what you did, how do I repay you?”
She couldn’t bear the look of pity she knew would be painted on his face, so burning eyes fell to her lap, watching her idle hands squirm in her lap. Her body flinched in the premium leather seat when a pale hand pierced her personal bubble to settle her restless fingers.
“There is nothing to repay. You are someone I care about, I would do anything to help you.”
Dove looked at him head-on and opened her mouth to protest, to demand him to name his price because she’s lived long enough to know that nothing is free, but the gleam in his eyes stopped her before she could start. Even without getting to know him for the past few months, she had enough data in her brain to know Bruce Wayne was a stubborn person that came from a long line of equally stubborn individuals.
By the flare of her nose, the billionaire knew the dragon had been defeated for now. Now for the next phase of his master plan.
Dove’s demeanor slowly thawed out the further he drove them away from the precinct. Tense shoulders began to droop, twitching fingers calmed, her painfully stiff spine began to slouch, the fog of despair dissipated. The sullen woman worked up the energy to shift her focus from her lap to the window, watching the way the world passed by.
Bruce had to resist jerking the steering wheel when a giggle escaped her cracked lips.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing to your billionaire mind. It always amuses me when people do double takes when they see this car. You can’t see their eyes but I know what they’re thinking. ‘Is that fucking Bruce Wayne?’ I always thought that when I saw you on my commute.”
Her tired voice perked up the longer she spoke, it warmed his ears. “Oh yeah?”
“The only other person that causes this reaction is Batman. He moves so quick and wears all that black so you can barely see him-”
Bruce slowed the car down to a stop as he waited for the light to change green. His jaw longed to clench and grind his molars against their opposites. It took no brain power to know what made his passenger stop her sentence.
He hated that that was how she met his alter ego. The way her usually bright brown eyes were filled with nothing but panic and fear, fear of him, haunted him for days. He lost sleep thinking about how he was the one that turned her in, the reason she was detained in a cold cell downtown.
It was all his fault and she didn’t know. Nor could she, not right now when things were so precarious. Bruce promised himself he would tell her soon, he had to. By his own hand, Bruce had trapped himself in a rock and a hard place. A splat of rain hitting the windshield broke the brooding man out of his thoughts.
“It never stops raining here. You know, I almost decided to move to Metropolis after hearing how bad the weather is in Gotham.” Dove said as her finger chased after a lone raindrop sliding down the tinted window, bare of the colored nail polish he remembered seeing the night of her arrest.
“Oh yeah? What made you change your mind?”
“Bills. Everything is expensive in Metropolis. Rent, life insurance, cable, even car insurance and I don’t own a car! I calculated those numbers and signed the lease to my apartment the same day.”
“Gotham is cheap?”
“It's run down, Bruce. At least where I am. The same-sized apartment I got now is double the price in Metro. And it's not like rats are coming out the wall sockets or nothing, there’s too much crime for the landlords to charge an arm and a leg like they do in Metropolis.”
The light conversation distracted Dove from her demons. Instead of being mentally caged in the cell she could revisit the apartments she toured in the city before picking the one near Sheldon Station.
“I think you just passed my turn, Bruce. Its a right on Rucha, remember-”
“Dove.” He spoke her name tensely. Bruce didn’t have to but for her sake, squeezed the wheel and twisted his grip to tell his unease. Like it pained him to deliver the next bit of news when it actually sent his heart racing with fervor. “I can’t in good conscious leave you alone there.”
Plump limps separated to express her shock. Before she could begin to protest, her savior put his hand up to stop her arguments.
“Please, listen to me, Dove. I-” He sniffed his nose, seeming to hold back emotions he was too refined to express in public like this. “I don’t know who exactly you’ve gotten yourself involved with,”
Guilt coiled in her stomach like a cobra. Oh. Was she that awful and inconsiderate? For all he knew, Bruce could be getting himself involved with the biggest goons in Gotham for her sake. Was she really that self-absorbed? What was Dove thinking? Involving him in her plight. He was only trying to help her, the least she could do was hear him out.
Paying no mind to the moving car, Dove failed to feel the increase in acceleration as she reached to touch his hand, soothe his mind, and coax out his thoughts. Times like this she wished he grew up normal, somewhere where showing emotions was okay.
“I don’t care either. I just want you safe. And the best way to do that is if you stay with me. At the manor.”
“Bruce-”
“I have the best security on earth. There isn’t another house for miles. No one pops up without a month’s notice. Alfred is trained in five forms of combat. You’ll be safe here. And that way, I won’t have to worry about you.” He ended that confession with a deep sigh, driving the point home.
He cared so much about her, Dove realized. Her hips shifted if the premium leather seats. Outside the car, the beauty of Lemmars Park went ignored. The bridge that connected Uptown and the outskirts of the city loomed in the distance. Its overwhelming size didn't help to ease Dove’s nerves. She couldn’t even begin to see the other side of the bridge. The clouds and rain blocked what little light the streetlights provided the public.
She wouldn't have to stay forever. Just a couple days, until her trial ended and her body found itself in the county jail or back on her worn mattress in her apartment she worked so hard to make cozy.
Is Bruce asking for that much? A little staycation in the manor, being cared for and doted on by his lovely butler. Laughing and bonding with her friend. Learning new sides of his personality of the always posh and primped Bruce Wayne, sides that didn’t fit into his carefully molded character. Briefly, she wondered if he was the type to walk around in his draws or not.
Dove cast her eyes to his side profile. His jaw had tensed since he finished pleading his case. They neared the bridge. His grip on the wheel wavered before tightening until the leather squeaked. Her hand had yet to move from his other.
“I need to go home.”
Bruce cursed, out loud and at himself for falling for sucha stubborn mule of a woman. Was his tone not sappy enough? Should he have gone for a higher-pitched voice, and rubbed his jaw to showcase his distress instead of periodically gripping the wheel? It couldn’t be too late now. One last chance.
“Dove-”
“To pack up some clothes. Unless you have women’s clothing in a size 18 already in the guestroom’s closet?” Dove cracked the tiniest smile, those pretty crooked teeth lighting up the car. Bruce felt his chest concave. No, he didn’t have any clothing prepared for her in the guestroom.
Because he put the items in the master closet, next to his.
“That wasn’t funny.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”
“How?”
“How about some of my special étouffée for breakfast tomorrow?” The convertible dipped as it rolled off the streets of Uptown onto the paved smoothed concrete of the bridge. They were almost home.
“Can’t wait.” Dove could feel the honesty in his response. Her heart skipped a beat.
Oh, dear.
time to post and run? yeah, that's what I'll do. see yall tomorrow
can’t sleep til i share this
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