Chapter Text
“Will you tell those brats over there to keep it down?” comes Barbara’s clipped voice over the music rippling through the Sirens Club. It’s a full house tonight. Selina raises her chin just enough to follow the line of Barbara’s gaze. She spots the problem immediately; a gaggle of rich, carefree whelps around her own age. And Babs isn’t wrong, they are by far the loudest group here tonight. Still, that doesn’t mean Selina has to like it.
“Why me?” asks Selina anyway.
“Because you’re a partner now,” Barbara tells her, her tone an unflattering matter-of-fact thing, “and also the one paying happens to be a friend of yours.”
Dammit.
Selina had been trying to ignore it, of course. She’d been trying to ignore the fact that Bruce Wayne was partying away in her club, so obviously underage and still downing their alcohol like he had an hour of life left to live. Maybe hoping she could avoid him altogether, she wasn’t totally sure. Alas, somebody up there hated her guts.
With a not-so-subtle roll of her eyes, Selina makes her way through the Sirens’ customers and over to the booth Bruce and his… friends occupied. No, she refused to call them his friends. Not real friends, anyway. By the look of these drunken assholes, all they wanted from Bruce was his trust fund. Her heart squeezes uncomfortably. Selina never did find it actually taxing to deal with disruptive clients when she had to, but right now? There was nothing she dreaded more.
Hair gelled up, wearing a suit that probably cost more than what the Sirens would make in a week of successful nights, Selina might’ve been convinced this was the Bruce she knew. Except that the most shit-eating smirk played on his lips, and that he had both his arms around the bare shoulders of two cake-faced, glittery, flirting twits.
“Bruce.”
Bruce looks up, still grinning in an obnoxious way that made Selina want to slap him. “What’s up?” he calls, sounding off his shit already. “Champagne?”
“No,” says Selina, taking care to mask the way she’s thrown off. And she despises the way his skanks look her up and down, all judgy. As if Selina’s the one hanging off some billionaire brat’s arm for free drinks.
“Why?” He’s mockingly incredulous as if he just couldn’t fathom why not. “They don’t card you here, and even if they did…” Bruce practically peels the girls off of him, leaning forward into Selina’s space to jeer the words “...this is Gotham” with a self-satisfied laugh and a sip of the club’s most expensive champagne.
“By ‘they’, you mean me,” Selina says. “This is my place too.”
“Oh, really?” There it is again, that taunting, degrading disbelief in his voice. He leans back against the booth barrier, the air of confidence so thick you could cut it with a knife. Like he was simply untouchable.
Selina knew he wasn’t untouchable. “Yeah. So you wanna tell your little bitch squad to reel it back a little, or should I call your keeper?”
“Go ahead. Call Alfred, he won’t answer.”
“Why?”
“Because I fired him,” says Bruce, and he looks proud . It’s the second time Selina has felt the urge to punch him in the throat. He brings his drink to his lips, not once breaking eye contact with Selina as he does so. “For good, this time. Legally and everything. I thought it was time to move on, know what I’m saying?”
And Selina can’t help but scoff at this pathetic display Bruce has put on. “Oh, you sure about that? I’m not buying it.”
“Not buying what?”
“This,” says Selina, gesturing to the whole package. The girls, the drinks, the childish brat wearing the face of Bruce Wayne. “You. Getting rid of Alfred? What exactly are you trying to prove?”
And for the moment, Bruce seems stunned into silence. As he should be. Selina knows him better than this, better than he thinks she does. Yet he dares to treat her like what, a conquest? Like a rock in his shoe? He can party and drink and mess around and be a douche all he likes, she doesn’t- no, Selina doesn’t care. Doesn't care at all. But if he thinks he can show up in her club and act like he owns the place, then Selina is going to knock him down a peg or two.
“Keep it down, Bruce,” is the last thing Selina tells him before she turns on her heel and returns to Tabitha and Barbara.
- - -
The night seems to drag on like dirt, and Selina didn’t come into direct contact with Bruce again. Seeing him, however, was a different story. While talking with Tabitha by the bar, Selina spots a wasted Bruce being led to the back rooms by one of his skanks out of the corner of her eye. She refused herself anything more than a glance, because she doesn’t care what Bruce chooses to do with his life. She doesn’t.
She shook herself out of it and brought her attention back onto Tabitha.
Hours later, people finally begin to leave. Music lowered, the bar announces last call and the drunkies hanging onto one another as they struggle out the door. Babs, being who she is, took her leave right before cleanup. Tabitha had to step outside for a moment to deal with a commotion, so Selina is alone in picking up the scattered trash left by their clients. She tosses whatever she comes across into a garbage bag. Napkins, beer cans, etc. Her brain feels numb, she’s running on autopilot.
Until there’s a muted sound, like furniture knocking against a wall followed by heavy wheezing, coming from the back rooms.
Well, it’s more interesting than this.
Selina discards the bag on the floor and makes a beeline for the back rooms. She rarely comes back there unless she hears people messing around in there after hours. Well, it’s after hours. Coming to the third door of the hallway, where the breathy pants are coming from.
“We’re closing up. Fun’s over, everybody’s gone home,” calls Selina, arms crossed over her chest as she leans against the door’s frame.
No reply.
"Hey! You awake in there!?" Starting to get impatient, Selina pounds her fist on the door. She tries the handle; locked. The choked coughing continues, and the owner's voice sounds too familiar for her liking. Ear pressed to its surface, Selina listens in. Her heart stutters in her chest. "...Bruce?"
More wet heaving, something thick gets choked up.
"Bruce, open-" Selina cuts herself short, her heart dropping when she hears the unmistakable heavy thud of a body collapsing to the floor on the other side. There's a weak grunt of pain, a prolonged groan, then she hears nothing. Oh shit .
She backs up before lunging forward with all her weight, plants her foot beside the handle, and the door gives way with a splintering crack.
Lying on the floor, on his back as he froths dirty-white foam from the mouth, is Bruce Wayne. He's unconscious, coughing and wheezing past the shit spraying from blue lips. From Selina's quick lookover of the storage closet, she spots an empty syringe alongside a lighter, a spoon, and a plastic wrapper of spilled white powder. She comes to an equally simple and horrifying conclusion.
He's overdosed.
Bruce is dying at her feet.
For a moment, Selina stays frozen in her place, just staring at Bruce's writhing body. She realises that she is all that stands between Bruce and death. She realises, sickening even in her own head, that she could leave him. Turn away and close the door, and he would die here. Selina would get off scot-free. Even Gordon wouldn't suspect her, because Selina is Bruce’s friend in Gordon’s eyes. Plus, Selina is a fantastic liar, stealthy like a cat. Gordon doesn’t know how Bruce has pissed her off lately, how much of a douchebag he’s become, how he’s treated Selina like she means nothing to him. According to him, she has no reason to let Bruce die like this. Gordon, like usual, doesn’t know shit.
She can walk away. She can leave, and not be held accountable for her actions. Just the way she likes to live her life. But-
But this is Bruce.
Bruce, a boy brought up so sheltered from Gotham’s horrors that he saw the best in everybody he met. He’s kind. He’s good. Truly good in a city that showed him he should be otherwise. Especially after he watched his parents be murdered right in front of him, and after so many people - Selina included - had used that good against him. Yet he’s still good.
The bratty kid Selina encountered partying in the Sirens Club was not Bruce. Not the real Bruce. He was acting like the person he thought people expected him to be, hiding behind a mask. The person, admittedly, Selina thought he would have been when she first met him.
Bruce is the boy who’d offered her a place to stay despite how poorly she had treated him in her attempts to push him away. The boy who’d danced with her at a public gala like no one was watching. The boy who’d driven all the way down to the filthy streets of Gotham just to give her a present. The boy who’d jumped a building to chase after her. The boy who’d trusted Selina’s judgment over that pretty blonde St Cloud girl, someone with the power to give him so much more than Selina ever could. The boy with only the best intentions when he’d tried to give Selina more time with her estranged mom. The boy who had once been so kind to her, as if somehow ignoring the roughness of her nature and respected her as an actual human being instead of good-for-nothing street trash like everybody else.
I told her I trusted her with my life. And that I felt tied to her in a way I couldn’t explain but wouldn’t change. Ever. The best liars always tell the truth.
That was true? Selina had asked.
Yes. Just not about her.
And thinking about that, replaying the heavy moment - one that had left her stunned in silence at the sincerity she so blatantly remembers - in her mind like it happened yesterday, it hit Selina that she couldn’t lose that boy. She couldn’t lose Bruce.
Selina doesn't waste a second more, dropping into a crouch at Bruce's side. Mind racing for what to do, she turns her head to yell to the next room. “Tabitha! TABITHA!”
“What is it, Sel-” Tabitha cuts herself off upon seeing Bruce’s body. Although her horror at the scene isn’t completely obvious, Selina sees it in her eyes. She knows him - of course she does, her whole family wanted him dead for ancient bloodline rivalry/sacrificial reasons, but they didn’t dwell on that - and Selina is guessing Tabby is thinking about just how bad it would be if the Prince of Gotham died here.
“Get help. Cops, hospital, anything,” grits out Selina over her shoulder, weaker than she would’ve liked, her gaze fixed on Bruce’s face. “ Please .”
Hearing the telltale clicking of Tabitha’s high-heeled boots fade down the hallway, Selina recalls the last time she had to deal with an overdose. The steps she’d been told to take in order to save the life of some street kid junkie who’d made friends with Ivy back in the day.
With a shaky exhale and a vague idea of what to do, Selina bites the bullet and uses her index and middle fingers to scoop as much of the froth out from Bruce’s parted mouth as she can. Selina then pinches his nose and links their mouths together, huffing out a breath into his body. Comes up for air, goes down to push it into his lungs. He tastes like bitterness and champagne. Selina reaches for Bruce’s wrist as she does so, feeling for a pulse.
Her breath catches in her throat.
She feels something too weak, too slow, under her fingertips.
“No, no, no, no, Bruce…!” she murmurs frantically under her breath, pulling away to spit the foam residue in her mouth on the floor before starting- compressions? Is that what they’re called? Selina can’t remember in her panic. Doesn’t really matter. It’s CPR nonetheless.
30 compressions, 2 breaths, rinse and repeat. Over and over, whispering her pleads as if Bruce can hear them. Please, please, wake up. Fatigue is threatening to overtake her, but Selina is determined. Wake up, come back. She yells for Tabitha again, panting heavily, and she tells her an ambulance is on their way. Selina stifles a dry sob for Tabitha’s sake. Live for me, Bruce, Bruce, please come back.
Selina pounds both clenched fists on Bruce’s chest in her frustration, a paired yell ripping from her throat. He can’t die. Not here, not now. Selina can’t-
Arching his back, Bruce subconsciously gasps. He sputters, struggling to breathe, more foam spilling from his blue-tinted lips. Selina moves quickly, gripping his shoulders to roll him onto his side. He coughs wetly from the back of his throat, his entire body shaking with the effort.
“Se-Selina…” he manages between ragged heaving, but Selina shushes him. Her heart swells with relief, she feels overwhelmed by it. Tucking her knee flush with Bruce’s back to make him hold the lifesaving position, her hand rubs his back in a hopefully soothing motion.
He’ll live.