DC – I am Batman

Her hands were on his temples and her magic was inside his head and this time it was different.

The exercise was supposed to be deeper than last week. She'd explained it on the phone, clinical and precise: a new layer of defense against psychic possession. She needed to push past the outer walls and test the resistance underneath. Stronger contact. More sustained. It would require her to stay inside his mind longer than before, which meant her magic would be in direct contact with his consciousness for minutes instead of seconds.

"It might feel intimate," she'd said. "Fair warning."

He'd said OK. He was sitting on the floor of her apartment, cross-legged, facing her. Same position as last time. Same rug with the patch that didn't match. The jar on the third shelf was doing its weekly impression of being inanimate, which he didn't buy for a second. Zatanna was across from him with her knees touching his and her palms flat on his temples and her eyes closed and her magic was doing what her magic always did when it touched him, which was hum.

The hum was louder this time. Deeper. She pushed past the outer wall without effort because he let her, and the warmth of her magic spread through the second layer, the organized architecture that had rebounded her last time. She moved carefully around it. Mapped the edges. Found the channels between the walls and flowed through them, and her magic was in the deep structure of his thoughts and she was breathing faster and her fingers were pressing harder against his skin.

"OK," she said. Her voice was strained. "I'm in the secondary layer. Your defenses are holding. I'm going to probe the perimeter and test for-"

She stopped.

Her breathing changed. Her fingers on his temples went rigid. Her eyes were closed but behind the lids white light was building, glowing through the skin.

"Bruce."

"What's wrong."

"I can..." She swallowed. "The feedback. At this depth, the magic creates a... I can feel what you're feeling."

The apartment went very quiet.

He knew what she was feeling. He knew because he was feeling it. He was sitting six inches from Zatanna Zatara with her hands on his face and her magic in his mind and he was thinking about the gold flecks in her eyes and the scar on her upper lip and how she'd held his hands last week and her fingers curling into his palms and the humming while she made pasta and the rabbit socks and the spring roll and the ten years of walking next to this woman and the ache underneath it that he'd been carrying so long it had become structural, load-bearing, the thing the rest of his careful architecture rested on.

She could feel all of that.

Her mouth opened. Her cheeks were flushed. The white light behind her eyelids pulsed and then faded and she opened her eyes and they were brown and wide and the gold flecks were bright and she was looking at him and she knew.

"That's..." She pulled her hands off his temples. Her fingers were shaking. "That's what you..." She pressed her hands together in her lap, the shaking visible, and she stared at them and she was flushed from her cheeks to her collarbones and the flush was spreading.

"Zee."

"You." She looked up. Her eyes were wet. "You've been-"

"Yeah."

"How long."

He didn't answer with a number because the number was most of his life and he didn't know how to say that without it sounding bigger than the room could hold. He just looked at her and she looked at him and the apartment was silent except for the clock he could never find and her breathing and his breathing and the faint hum of her magic still resonating in the air between them.

She crossed the gap.

She moved forward on her knees, closed the six inches, and her hands came up to his face and she kissed him.

Soft. Her lips barely touching his. A question more than an act. Her fingers were still trembling on his jaw and her mouth was warm and uncertain and she tasted like the tea she'd been drinking, chamomile, and underneath that she tasted like magic, the way the air tastes before a storm, charged and clean.

He didn't move. He let her lead. Her mouth pressed harder. The question became an answer. She tilted her head and the angle changed and the kiss deepened and her breath hitched and her hands slid from his jaw into his hair and she pulled him closer and ten years of friendship cracked down the middle.

He kissed her back.

His hands went to her waist. She made a sound into his mouth, small and raw, and her body pressed against his and she was warm everywhere, warmer than a normal person, warmer than she'd been last week, and the magic humming in her skin was louder now, resonating in his bones. She was shaking. She kissed him harder, deeper, her tongue against his, and the trembling in her hands spread to her shoulders and he pulled her closer and she climbed into his lap and her weight settled on his thighs and her arms went around his neck.

A lamp flickered.

She didn't notice. He did. The bulb in the table lamp behind her blinked twice and then the overhead light buzzed and dimmed. Her magic was leaking. Emotion destabilizing her control, the way it did when she forgot to turn it off while she was thinking, except this wasn't thinking. This was her hands in his hair and her hips shifting against his and the sound she was making, low and continuous and breathless.

He stood up with her. Her legs wrapped around his waist and he turned and pressed her against the wall and she gasped. Her head tipped back and he kissed her neck and her throat and the spot below her ear where her pulse was fast and she said his name in a voice he'd never heard from her. Low. Broken open. Her fingers tightened in his hair and she arched against him and a book flew off the shelf.

Then another. Three books launched themselves from the bookcase near the window and hung in the air, pages open, suspended by magic she wasn't controlling. The lamp flickered again and the overhead light buzzed loud and a glass on the kitchen counter cracked.

She didn't notice any of it. She was kissing his jaw, his neck, her hands pulling at his shirt, and the magic was building in the room like a thunderstorm gathering indoors. Another book left its shelf. The playing cards from the deck on the coffee table rose in a slow spiral, each one turning face-up as it climbed.

"Zee." He said her name against her throat. His hands were on her hips and her body was warm against his and he was hard and she could feel it and she pressed closer and made a sound that-

She stopped.

Her whole body went rigid. Her hands went flat on his chest and she pushed. He let her push him back. She dropped her feet to the floor and stood against the wall with her chest heaving and her mouth red and her eyes wide and terrified.

"I-" She looked around the apartment. Saw the books floating. The cards in their spiral. The cracked glass. The light buzzing. Her face went white.

"We can't." Her voice was high and fast. "You're- we- this is-"

"Zee."

"Don't." She held up a hand. Her fingers were still shaking. A spark jumped between her index finger and her thumb and she saw it and pressed her hand against her leg to stop it. "Don't say my name like that. I can't- if you say it like that I'm going to-"

She stopped. Closed her eyes. Breathed. When she opened them the fear was still there but she had a grip on it, the performer's composure, the stage face she wore when a trick went wrong in front of an audience.

"I need you to leave," she said.

He didn't argue. He didn't ask why, didn't push, didn't point out that she'd been the one who crossed the gap and kissed him and climbed into his lap and said his name in a voice that had been building for a decade. He knew why. She was terrified. She'd loved him since she was fifteen and she'd buried it under friendship and card tricks and Thai food on his floor and the friendship had been enough, had been safe, and now she'd felt what he felt through the magic and she'd kissed him and the apartment was full of floating books and cracked glass and her magic was out of control and everything they'd built was changing and she couldn't make it stop.

"OK," he said.

He picked up his jacket from the chair. The books were still floating. The cards were still turning. A candle on the shelf had lit itself. She was standing against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest and her mouth tight and her eyes bright and wet and she was looking at him like he was a door she was afraid to walk through.

"I'll call you," she said.

"When you're ready."

"I said I'll call." She looked at the books. Waved a hand and they dropped. The cards fell in a scatter across the coffee table and the floor. The candle guttered. The light stopped buzzing. The apartment went still.

He put on his jacket. Walked to the door. The jar on the third shelf rattled as he passed it.

"Bruce."

He stopped.

"It's not that I don't want-" She pressed her lips together. Looked at the ceiling. "It's that I've wanted this since I was fifteen and that's terrifying and I need to think and I can't think when you're in the room because apparently my magic tells you everything I'm feeling when you're close enough."

"I know."

"Stop being understanding. It's making it worse."

He almost smiled. He didn't. He opened the door and walked out and closed it behind him and stood in the hallway of her building and listened to the silence and then, muffled through the door, the sound of a book hitting the floor. Then another. Then a third, harder, thrown this time.

He walked down the stairs. The hallway smelled like the Thai place on the first floor that always had its exhaust fan running and someone in 2B was playing jazz at a volume that suggested they lived alone and preferred it that way. He pushed through the front door into the evening air and the city was loud and orange with sunset and a pigeon on the fire escape across the street was watching him with the blank judgment that pigeons specialize in.

He walked home. His mouth tasted like chamomile and magic. His hands still carried the warmth of her waist. The gold flecks in her eyes were going to stay behind his eyelids for a long time.

She'd call. When she was ready.

He walked. The sun went down. The city turned on its lights.