The night is thick with heat - unnatural, oppressive. Gotham’s usual chill has been smothered under a creeping, feverish tension. Bruce feels it in his bones, in the restless pulse of his blood. The city reeks of sweat and desperation, of whispered confessions in shadowed alleys, of hands grasping at things they shouldn’t.

Something is wrong, obviously. Crime hasn’t spiked - not in the usual ways. But the reports… whispers of strangers tangled in alleys, businesses closing early for private reasons, a low, throbbing desperation in the air. Possibilities swirl: a new drug? Something in the water supply? Something in the air? His scanners have found no trace of Ivy's pheromones; the water tests clean from multiple sources.

He’s been tracing this growing wrongness for days, trying to understand, so that he can fix. So far? Both things have eluded him. Finally, he had to admit to himself that he needed another perspective. That he knows someone who always seems able to spot things he may have missed. That this meeting needed to be arranged.

He tells himself 'the case' is the only reason he needs it.

He crouches on the rooftop’s edge, cowl drawn low, forcing his breath steady. He’s aware of his own body in a way that’s distracting - every shift of the suit, every too-warm gust against his skin. He’s indulged, privately, just enough to keep his mind clear. Or so he tells himself. But control is slipping. The need coils tighter each night, whispering, demanding. Unnatural. Unrelenting.

And then they arrive.

His jaw clenches. He knows them - knows the curve of their smile, the way they move, the history between them. His skin burns under the suit. Focus fractures. He should be analyzing, strategizing, but all he can think of is how their presence makes the hunger worse, how his body betrays him with a traitorous twinge of want.

“You noticed it too,” he growls, voice rough. It’s not a question. He doesn’t trust himself to turn yet, to face them fully. The Dark Knight is control. He is in control.

(He isn’t.)