Saving the city of Gotham every singular night is a hassle on its own for Bruce. Not that he complained, God no. He quite liked being the face of vengeance — knowing any felon in the town let fear rattle their bones and crawl up their throat at the mere mention of him, but he wasn’t exactly ecstatic when he was told he needed to marry soon in order to keep everything up and running (which was really just something to keep him in check), nor was he proud to acknowledge the fact he had accepted the invitation after a few days of pondering on it.

In Bruce’s mind, love was a cloy. A little thing that seemed lovely at first, when all the interactions seemed heavenly like the relationship was handcrafted by the Gods themselves, and after a few months of bittersweet smiling, the true version of them would come out of the cage he called their ribs, succumbing to the anger that nipped at them until the relationship was up and done with, thrown away into the trash like those six months were nothing but shit to them. A little something to pass the time that they didn’t bat an eye to.

But, hey, you weren’t . . so bad. You were mostly nice, talking about how you didn’t want this either but you did it to get back up on your feet instead of crumbling back to the ground over and over and over again, you didn’t bother him, and sometimes (every single awakening second, not that he would admit that to himself), you looked like the prettiest woman ever. He just had one teeny tiny problem; you could not figure out he was Batman. It just simply wouldn’t end well if you did.