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1. The officer's eyes are bright and very warm behind his glasses, his smile gentle as he tucks the coat around Bruce and it settles like a king's dusty mantle, some vestige of Dad's warmth in the fabric even though it's been-- since they-- it feels like forever and just a moment, time both rushing and stretching like the molasses of Alfred's brownies. "It's all right, son," he says, "it's all right," and then there's the scratch of his mustache and the press of his lips against Bruce's forehead that makes his entire body shudder, rattle, start to fall apart as his insides collapse--
And then Bruce is waking up to the warmth of his fur-lined hammock and the chill of the air against his exposed face, frost on his eyelashes, jarred by the sounds of others moving nearby. He leaves the cocoon of comfortable heat without hesitation and steps into the Tibetan winter chill that pervades every inch of the monastery, and dresses silently, with neither haste nor sluggishness. Snugging the last strap of his sword's sheath, Bruce leaves the dormitory and goes to the morning sparring session with a stony face, but the invented memory of a kiss that never happened still fills a fraction of the aching hole in his chest.
2. His fingers hooked into the gap between the shoulders plates of Batman's armour, Jim holds him in place over the railing of the fire escape and kisses him long and hard, their teeth clashing painfully. "Come back alive," Jim rasps when they break for air, and Bruce kisses him again because he knows he won't.
3. Gordon's eyes are full of pity as he looks at Bruce, who invited the commissioner over to dinner and then spent the entire evening drunk and half-dressed, parading around wet from the shower with a flute of champagne constantly in his hand as he tells story after story about the women he's (never) fucked and rating them cruelly. "Is this what you want from me, then?" Gordon asks wearily, and before Bruce knows it, Gordon's hands are laced over the back of his neck and he's kissing Bruce, kissing him fully and thoroughly and with undeniable skill, lips and tongue sliding slick and hot against Bruce's own.
Then it's over and Gordon just looks tired. He walks away without another word and leaves the penthouse in silence. Feeling suddenly hollow, Bruce lets him go because he hurts, he hurts, he hurts for having to act in such a way around a man that he respects so much, having to fake a reason that the playboy Prince of Gotham would want to be around somebody like Gordon, when really it's just for his own desperate desire for company, selfishly overlooking the fact that Gordon so obviously doesn't want his; and it hurts even more that Bruce can't even blame his behavior on being drunk because the glass in his hand is full of ginger ale.
4. Batman leans forward and his lips are gentle, gentle, eternally considerate of the fact that Jim cannot allow himself passion while he's still mired in the guilt of being a married man, cheating on his own back porch. It's been nearly a year now and they've never done anything more, never gone past the tenderness of a single kiss. Jim can almost tell himself that it's not cheating because it's not about sex or romance or even mutual affection-- just the partnership of soldiers, and him giving human contact to his partner who cannot possibly have a life or a family of his own, who desperately needs intimacy from someone and can't get it anywhere else but Jim.
Batman leaves in a silent melting of black shadows and Jim closes his eyes; then he turns around to go back inside and finds that Barbara is standing at the door, looking at him through the window. Jim's insides go cold with horror.
They don't talk even when Jim finally comes back inside, but go about the house turning off lights for the night with some eerie facade of normality, somehow managing not to look at each other even as they pass within arm's reach. In bed, in the dark, Barbara's voice is just resigned and tired when she finally whispers into the silence, "For a while I almost wished it would be some woman, some secretary or female cop... but then I think I always knew it would be him."
5. "Commish, I got that paperwork that you wantewoahshit I'll just wait outside then." Jim hears Montoya scramble back out of the office, shutting the door hastily over the buzz of nearby officers that want to know what the problem is. She barks an order that the commissioner is not to be disturbed under any circumstances and the bullpen quiets once more under what must be Montoya's infamous I-could-seriously-blow-a-gasket-if-you-fuck-with-me-now glare. Jim smirks and goes back to kissing Bruce languidly, who chuckles slightly into the kiss as he makes short work of Jim's tie and slides his hands beneath the older man's shirt, taking full advantage of the desk for as long as he has Jim laying across it.