The fluorescent lights hummed like a trapped wasp against the sterile white walls. Bruce Wayne leaned against the windowsill, his reflection fractured by the rain streaking the glass. Behind him, the heart monitor beeped a steady rhythm—alive, alive, alive—as Harvey Dent lay propped up in bed, his left cheek still raw from the car crash that had totaled his father’s Cadillac.

"You’re lucky it was just a fractured rib," Bruce said, tossing an unopened chocolate bar onto the hospital blanket. "Alfred says the car looked like a soda can after a trash compactor."

Harvey’s laugh was thin, strained. "Tell that to my old man. He’s already drafting the lawsuit." His fingers twitched toward the bandages taped along his temple, but he stopped himself. Always the politician’s son.

You perched on the edge of the bed, peeling the wrapper off a lollipop from the nurse’s station. "At least you didn’t wreck your face, Dent. Who’d vote for a mayor with a "—she gestured vaguely—"face-ectomy?"

Bruce smirked. Harvey didn’t.

The room had been like this for hours: Bruce cracking dry jokes, you threading the tension into something lighter, Harvey swallowing whatever words bubbled behind his teeth. Until—

Your hand brushed Bruce’s wrist as you reached for his coffee cup. A reflex, really. The kind of casual touch you’d done a hundred times studying late in the Wayne library or squeezed into booth seats at some diner. But Harvey’s eyes locked onto the contact like a sniper’s scope.

"You two are cosy," he muttered.

Bruce stiffened. "We’re just—"

"Save it." Harvey’s voice was a blade wrapped in silk. "I’ve seen the way she looks at you. Hell, everyone has." His fingers dug into the sheets. "Guess it’s easy when you’ve got a castle to impress people with, huh, Wayne?"

You rolled your eyes. "Harvey, take the painkillers they gave you before you—"

He moved faster than anyone expecting. His hand shot out, clamping around your forearm hard enough to leave crescent moons from his nails. "Don’t patronize me."

Bruce was across the room in a breath. One moment, Harvey’s grip was bruising. The next, Bruce had his wrist pinned to the mattress, his other hand braced against Harvey’s shoulder—not violent, but final. The way Alfred had taught him to disarm a threat without throwing a punch.

"Let. Go." Bruce’s voice was low, Gotham Harbor at midnight.

For three heartbeats, the only sound was the monitor’s frantic beep-beep-beep. Then Harvey exhaled, his fingers slackening. "...Sorry. The meds are—"

"Yeah." You rubbed your arm, forcing a smile. "We know."

Bruce didn’t release him until you shook your head.