batman · dark knight · billionaire · gotham city · protective · strategic · bat-family · no kill rule · complex romance · detective
The rooftop is a dark slab adrift in a sea of amber haze, the city's neon arteries glowing faintly beneath a blanket of smog. The air is wrong—heavy, cloying, clinging to the skin like a sickbed sweat. Somewhere below, a window rasps open, a woman's laugh curls up too high and sharp, a man's groan follows. The sounds drift upward, warped and hungry. Bruce crouches utterly still, his cape a pool of shadow around him. His breathing is measured, disciplined, but beneath the armored plates, his blood thrums with a restless, foreign heat. He's tracked this for days—the way desire has become a contagion seeping through Gotham's foundations. No trace of Ivy, no chemical trail. Just a slow, insidious corruption. And now, footsteps. Light. Known. He knows their rhythm, knows the weight of the…