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thejusticelounge2014-07-19 06:54 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-07-19 06:54 pm
tusk tusk tusk
K TXT: I got you in with Dr. Schultz for teeth repair at 12:15. No questions asked.
O TXT: No questions asked from him or from you?
K TXT: him. I got the report this morning, though I don’t have any questions myself.
O TXT: Thanks, kate. for the appointments not the no-questions o your part, if you ever want to talk about anything you know there’s no subject forbidden.
K TXT: I know. Are you going to be okay?
K TXT: why am I texting you i’m in the damn kitchen
O TXT: Because I’m in bed and I don’t wanna move?
O TXT: Also the ol’ voicebox isn’t working the way it should, that boy of ours has a strong grip
O TXT: come on back to the bedroom and see me sometime, suggestive wink
K TXT: You want coffee?
K TXT: stupid question, I know you want coffee
O TXT: bring me whatever coffees you have! strong and sweet an full of cream
O TXT: the way i like my lovers
K TXT: how can you be so raunchy when you’re beat all to shit
Kate does, in fact, have plenty of coffee when she steps into the bedroom a few minutes later. Gotham is wrapped in sunny haze outside the windows—the kind that indicates it’s ridiculously, horrendously hot and humid, and going to get worse before the day is up.
"He didn’t have to whale on you that damn hard," she says, frowning as she looks Ollie over, setting a mug of coffee on the table next to his side of the bed.
"He’s mad," Ollie shrugs, sitting up (although that’s in a general sense of being somewhat upright, more than actual sitting), "and he’s hurting, and his city’s being ripped up. Plus I was attacking his kid." He takes the coffee greedily and nurses it, managing about a third of the cup before relaxing against the headboard and putting the cup down, reaching out to touch Kate with a couple of bandaged fingers. "You look so pretty in this sunshine."
"You were attacking pretty much everything," says Kate, wondering if she shouldn’t reschedule this appointment for a day or two later, when Ollie’s had a chance to pull it together. Then again, maybe he won’t be so ornery at the dentist if he’s tired.
She leans into his touch anyway, raises her eyebrows at him. “I don’t feel pretty,” she says. “I feel exhausted. Even going home and sleeping three hours solid didn’t help.”
"Well, there you go. He didn’t have much of a choice when it came to whaling on me." He lets his hand drop back onto the bed, drawing in a few laboured breaths. "And even if you don’t feel pretty, doesn’t mean you don’t look it. Doing good work always makes you pretty to me, Katie." Ollie smiles, lopsided.
Kate frowns, looking him over. “I’m going to reschedule that appointment,” she says, not because she’s dodging what he has to say, but because he looks like fucking hell, clearly feels it, and explaining that away will be…special, even if she’s paying quite a bit to keep the work out of public view. “You can’t even breathe properly, there’s no way you can go out—”
"I feel fine!" Ollie gathers an effort — plain through the bunching of the muscles in his arms — and pushes himself to sit up. "See? No pain at all. It looks worse than it feels. But if you think I should stay in, honey. I guess I will."
Ollie picks up his coffee again and settles back with it. “Tell me what happened in El Paso. Did you run into any actual Lanterns?”
"You can barely breathe without wheezing," says Kate. "We can put it off for another day, it’s not as if they can replace it with the real thing." She’s still not entirely thrilled that Ollie’s in this state, is worried about the drugs flowing back onto Gotham’s streets thick and fierce, and then there’s her own damn project to work on.
She picks up her phone, makes a brief call to reschedule, all in Public Ms Spencer Queen tone of voice, then flops onto the bed next to Ollie, careful not to run into him as she does. “Not a Lantern to be seen. Not even a Green one,” she replies. “But they were definitely there—fuck, O, it was a fucking mess. It wasn’t even a…” she gestures towards outside, to the charred and crumbling sprawl of downtown in the distance. “It didn’t even have INTENT to it, like Joker’s chaos, or centralized destruction like a natural disaster. This was pure on monkey-flinging-poop-tantrum kind of disaster zone. It was…it was really disconcerting.”
"That’s one’a the better descriptions of what Yellow Lanterns do, yeah." Ollie puts his hand on Kate’s leg, making her careful attempts not to bump him moot. The scabs on his knuckles and the impacted darkened nail of his middle finger stand out against his skin, but he still pats and strokes her as if he were in a completely normal state. "It’s hard to wrap your head around, but I find all that Lantern lore hard to digest. It’s all so fucking alien. And I don’t mean relatable aliens, I mean ones with brain patterns that we can’t fathom."
He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “But at the same time. I was glad you were there, in the middle of all that, and not … somewhere that he would know to find you.”
"You were glad I was in the middle of a disaster area instead of here, where I’m not as safe," Kate translates, giving Ollie a sidelong look, though she doesn’t castigate him further about it. Instead she inhales, deeply, then exhales.
"That’s about the long and short of it." Saying it out loud makes Ollie look depressed, and with a sigh, he leans against Kate. "You wanted me to admit I’m scared, well, there y’go. It’s Walter, I can’t deny that when you’re so sure about it, and I don’t think you’re safe here. I don’t know if you should stay in Gotham where he knows to find you, I don’t know if you should be in LA or Star, either."
"You can’t expect me to go into hiding," Kate says, teeth digging hard into her lower lip. She doesn’t push Ollie away, but her posture, the tension in her muscles, indicate her displeasure—an unspoken ‘considering the risky dumbass shit you’ve done lately’, seeing as she’s still not gone off on him about his latest poor life choice. "There’s too much work to do. Better I keep him here, and know where he is, then have him scouring the country looking for me, leaving god knows how many more women in his wake."
"You being here isn’t going to stop him from killing other women," Ollie says direly. "He’ll kill exactly as many people as he thinks will get your attention or send his message or whatever he thinks will fuck you up most."
Swinging his legs off the bed, Ollie rolls his shoulders out and then shrugs, “But it’s your decision. I’m gonna go get some breakfast. I feel like corndogs.”
"So what exactly do you suggest," Kate replies, and her tone is somewhere between clipped frustration and being lost, uncertain like a child.
"And who eats corndogs for breakfast anyway," she calls after him, only reinforcing the latter tone.
"I do," Ollie calls back on his way out the bedroom, "because I’m a grown-ass man who can have whatever he damn well likes for breakfast. Corndogs or salmon tartare or champagne and weed." She hears him in the kitchen getting them out of the freezer and putting them in the toaster oven before he comes back down the hallway, one hand on the doorframe as he pops his head in to address her. "And I don’t suggest anything. I don’t expect anything. I don’t think I’m being any help anyways, so maybe somebody else will have better advice."
Heading back to the kitchen, Ollie says, “And I put two corndogs in for you, too.”
Kate scowls, the expression covering her growing concern about Ollie, because that was nothing if not a veiled statement of him hurting. She slides off the bed, finishing her cooling coffee, and trails after him to the kitchen, taking a not-that-difficult logical leap.
"What did he say to you," she says—less ask, more firm than ask, and in true married people fashion, not bothering to preface with an introduction to the topic. "Aside from likely an inevitable ‘you’re a fucking idiot’." This last is in an improved Batvoice.
He comes out of the fridge holding plain yellow mustard and grainy mustard and pauses, elbow on the door of the appliance, to look at her. “He didn’t say anything. Not even the inevitable, although that was a great simulation of it, have you been practicing?”
Ollie moves over to the toaster oven, taking two of the four corndogs out and squeezing mustard thickly on each. “I’m kinda wondering what it is that you want to say to me, though,” he says, then turns to her, raising his eyebrows expectantly. “C’mon, out with it. I’d rather get the castigation over before I try to eat.”
"Then what did he NOT say," Kate retorts. "Or whatever it is that has got you all fucking stubbornass ornery, and I’m not going to put up with it unless I have a good reason. How is it that you’re not able to help or suggest anything or whatever, because you’re clearly feeling like your self-esteem is in the shitter."
"I don’t know what he didn’t say, because he didn’t say it. And I’m not a mind-reader." Ollie licks a stray streak of bright yellow from his thumb, going back to the fridge to get some juice. "I don’t know what you’re asking me, either, because I’m not trying to be stubborn or ornery or anything."
He pours himself a glass, sloshing a bit of it over and then setting the jug down on the table, heavily, to say, “In fact, I have no idea, Kate, why it is you even feel the need to yell at me.”
Kate stares at him for a long moment. She opens her mouth, considers saying about four or five different things (go fuck yourself; are you still high; is this how the downer looks for Deep Freeze then; etc.), then closes it.
And then goes to the coffeepot, pours a new mugful, and walks out of the kitchen.
Ollie picks up his glass of juice as Kate leaves. He raises it to his mouth before putting it back down on the table hard enough to make a bang, sitting down and putting his head on the table, too.
At the sound, Kate freezes, tenses, far too hyperaware lately. After a moment she turns, comes back to stand in the kitchen doorway, not speaking.
"I’m tired, Kate," Ollie says, head still down. "Every which way a person can be tired, name it, and I’m that. I don’t have time to slow down and rest and recuperate. Bruce is all off-kilter because of losing his home and I can’t do anything about it except not make him feel bad for beating me to shit because he can’t fix it. You’re being stalked by some psycho monster from your past who’s supposed to be dead and all I can seem to do is piss you off. I gotta be the one outta the three of us to keep saying everything’ll work out and everything’ll be okay, and I’m running all over the country tracking down escaped fucking Arkhamites and dealing with goddamn fucking Shado on my own and it’s just … I’m tired. Everything hurt and I took a pill because I can’t afford to be hurt right now."
He raises his head, eyes dilated and glassy around the green. “I dunno if that’s what you wanted,” Ollie says, “but that’s all I got.”
Kate isn’t sure what to say—because she can definitely see what Ollie means—and at the same time, all of them were in a similar place. But Ollie, Ollie was never really the one to be the one to say things would be okay, to hang in there. Bruce was the one with the sheer determination and righteousness, enough for all of them, and there was no way to expect that from him now.
"I know, cielo," she says, looking back at him, the look on her face close to breaking. "I just…I wanted to know where you were at. I wanted to know what you’re thinking, because no one else is telling me, not Bruce or anyone else. But you scared me, taking that shit on purpose. I want…I want this all to be done, I want us to have a minute to breathe."
"Really?" He stands up, drawing lines through the spilled juice on the table with his fingertip. "Because you didn’t sound scared. You sounded angry." Ollie looks down at the liquid as it beads up along the wood of the table, and he continues, voice getting more and more dark as he goes along, "…and if you wanted to know what I’m thinking and where I’m at, Kate, since I’m the only one of the three of us who actually says anything out loud without being coaxed for hours beforehand, you could have just asked me at any fucking point." His hand jerks, knocking the glass over entirely, and it rolls and falls off the edge of the table.
Ollie makes a snatch for it, and ordinarily, with his reflexes? He would’ve caught it without even a blink in between. But instead he hits it with his open palm and it smashes against the dishwasher, breaking into a dozen pieces.
"Okay," Kate says, quietly, "I know. I’m sorry," but she sees where Ollie’s headed, feels her back stiffen a little and her chest start to clench up in panic. It’s the good old kind of all-too-familiar animal fear that she’s never really had in an argument with him anywhere, usually all too keen to have her blood up, except for
(there in that place, in the summer heat)
And so she bites her lip to keep down the reflex that bubbles up in her at the smash of the glass, to scream—the rest of it, a full body wince, she can’t keep from doing, from freezing in place—but she doesn’t need to worry about the sound. It’s trained full well to stay down, buried, in her chest.
Ollie startles, although it’s not the blood-deep small animal panic that Kate feels — just a shock, clearing through the pain fog clouding his eyes. “Shit,” he says, voice soft, and then moves over to painstakingly stoop down, start gathering the glass. He picks up the somewhat intact bowl and drops shards into it for a while before he looks up at Kate.
"I’m sorry too," he says. "I know you and Bruce are going through a lot. I’ve been trying to keep it together so I can be, y’know, supportive and all that. This was just … hard."
He reaches down and picks up another sliver, dropping it into the glass with a sharp crystalline tinkle. “I know he had to stop me from attacking Jason,” Ollie says, to the wet floor. “That wasn’t a problem. I’ve been on both sides of it when it comes to taking down a friendly who’s not in control of themselves. But he wouldn’t even say anything to me when he came by after, Kate. Not a word. Even after what happened, we would’ve had sex without him saying a goddamn thing.” He leans against the dishwasher, rivulets of juice soaking into the sleeve of his t-shirt. “That was — I dunno. That kinda wrecked me more than taking a beating ever would.”
"I know," says Kate, and though it’s usually a rote response, it’s the truth and the best thing she can do as she tries to stifle the way her insides have gone solid as rock, her thoughts half-frozen, through force of will. She can’t think—
She closes her eyes for a moment, tries to center, then opens them, getting herself back together. “He’s still broken, Ollie,” she says, and it’s a bit halting though anything but emotionless. “Just because he can get out of his chair and run and kick and fight and fuck doesn’t change anything else. He’s still…” The metaphor that comes to mind is a wounded animal, but she really isn’t sure she wants to go there.
"Well," Ollie says after a moment, tonelessly, "anyhow."
He makes quick work of the rest of the mess and straightens up gracelessly, mashed against the cabinets until he’s upright. “I could go get more of it,” he says, dumping the glass in the garbage. “The Deep Freeze. You know that. But I won’t, so there’s no need to be angry.” Ollie looks at his breakfast, cold on the plate even with the sunshine coming in through the window, and shakes his head as if somebody had told him to get to it.
"I think I’m gonna go take a shower," he says. "I didn’t mean to worry anybody."
Kate can feel something inside her crumbling apart, and she leans her head against the wood of the doorjamb with a softly audible thump. She’s certain she can’t give Ollie what he needs right now, isn’t even sure what that is; and she knows she’s not going to demand what she needs either, because she can’t do that to him.
"Okay," she says again. "I know you didn’t. I…I love you," she says. "I trust you. But I—I need to go lie down." Possibly sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch. Possibly cry by herself, not to be passive aggressive but because the panic needs to go somewhere.
"Yeah," Ollie says, and reaches out his hand to her as he passes, clasping hers in his swollen fingers. "I know you love me. You just don’t seem to like me much, these days.” Kissing her forehead, he says, “Go lie down, honey. It’ll be fine. You know how I go, fits and starts, I just need to get it all out and then I’m back in the saddle again. This is the last thing anybody needs on their plate at this point.”
He presses his fingertips into her palm, then heads down the hallway towards the bathroom.
"I do. But I don’t really like anything much these days," Kate admits, quietly, catching his hand carefully so she doesn’t hurt him. "Everything’s just…wrong. Skewed too far off balance."
She purses her lips, trails her fingertips against his wrist before letting go. “I’m sorry I can’t help more,” she says, moving towards the bedroom, then pausing in the hallway and looking after him. “That I can’t get it together.” And she means more than just helping him.
Ollie stops at the door to the bathroom to look at her too, and for a moment, it seems like they’re staring at each other from an unfathomable distance apart, the shadows of their Gotham condo chasing the sunlight down the walls, around the corners. He wants to go to her, curl into their bed together and fall blessedly asleep so it all stops hurting for one fucking minute, but she’s right. Everything’s too far off balance at the moment. They’d only shear into each other like rotating blades.
"I’m heading out after," Ollie says, voice echoing in the space. "I’ll see you when I get back. If you’re here."
After that, he can’t bear to look at Kate anymore, the long-held fear set in the lines of her face, the exhaustion rimming her dark eyes, the brittle look of her thin fingers against the wall. Ollie goes into the bathroom, and shuts the door.
O TXT: No questions asked from him or from you?
K TXT: him. I got the report this morning, though I don’t have any questions myself.
O TXT: Thanks, kate. for the appointments not the no-questions o your part, if you ever want to talk about anything you know there’s no subject forbidden.
K TXT: I know. Are you going to be okay?
K TXT: why am I texting you i’m in the damn kitchen
O TXT: Because I’m in bed and I don’t wanna move?
O TXT: Also the ol’ voicebox isn’t working the way it should, that boy of ours has a strong grip
O TXT: come on back to the bedroom and see me sometime, suggestive wink
K TXT: You want coffee?
K TXT: stupid question, I know you want coffee
O TXT: bring me whatever coffees you have! strong and sweet an full of cream
O TXT: the way i like my lovers
K TXT: how can you be so raunchy when you’re beat all to shit
Kate does, in fact, have plenty of coffee when she steps into the bedroom a few minutes later. Gotham is wrapped in sunny haze outside the windows—the kind that indicates it’s ridiculously, horrendously hot and humid, and going to get worse before the day is up.
"He didn’t have to whale on you that damn hard," she says, frowning as she looks Ollie over, setting a mug of coffee on the table next to his side of the bed.
"He’s mad," Ollie shrugs, sitting up (although that’s in a general sense of being somewhat upright, more than actual sitting), "and he’s hurting, and his city’s being ripped up. Plus I was attacking his kid." He takes the coffee greedily and nurses it, managing about a third of the cup before relaxing against the headboard and putting the cup down, reaching out to touch Kate with a couple of bandaged fingers. "You look so pretty in this sunshine."
"You were attacking pretty much everything," says Kate, wondering if she shouldn’t reschedule this appointment for a day or two later, when Ollie’s had a chance to pull it together. Then again, maybe he won’t be so ornery at the dentist if he’s tired.
She leans into his touch anyway, raises her eyebrows at him. “I don’t feel pretty,” she says. “I feel exhausted. Even going home and sleeping three hours solid didn’t help.”
"Well, there you go. He didn’t have much of a choice when it came to whaling on me." He lets his hand drop back onto the bed, drawing in a few laboured breaths. "And even if you don’t feel pretty, doesn’t mean you don’t look it. Doing good work always makes you pretty to me, Katie." Ollie smiles, lopsided.
Kate frowns, looking him over. “I’m going to reschedule that appointment,” she says, not because she’s dodging what he has to say, but because he looks like fucking hell, clearly feels it, and explaining that away will be…special, even if she’s paying quite a bit to keep the work out of public view. “You can’t even breathe properly, there’s no way you can go out—”
"I feel fine!" Ollie gathers an effort — plain through the bunching of the muscles in his arms — and pushes himself to sit up. "See? No pain at all. It looks worse than it feels. But if you think I should stay in, honey. I guess I will."
Ollie picks up his coffee again and settles back with it. “Tell me what happened in El Paso. Did you run into any actual Lanterns?”
"You can barely breathe without wheezing," says Kate. "We can put it off for another day, it’s not as if they can replace it with the real thing." She’s still not entirely thrilled that Ollie’s in this state, is worried about the drugs flowing back onto Gotham’s streets thick and fierce, and then there’s her own damn project to work on.
She picks up her phone, makes a brief call to reschedule, all in Public Ms Spencer Queen tone of voice, then flops onto the bed next to Ollie, careful not to run into him as she does. “Not a Lantern to be seen. Not even a Green one,” she replies. “But they were definitely there—fuck, O, it was a fucking mess. It wasn’t even a…” she gestures towards outside, to the charred and crumbling sprawl of downtown in the distance. “It didn’t even have INTENT to it, like Joker’s chaos, or centralized destruction like a natural disaster. This was pure on monkey-flinging-poop-tantrum kind of disaster zone. It was…it was really disconcerting.”
"That’s one’a the better descriptions of what Yellow Lanterns do, yeah." Ollie puts his hand on Kate’s leg, making her careful attempts not to bump him moot. The scabs on his knuckles and the impacted darkened nail of his middle finger stand out against his skin, but he still pats and strokes her as if he were in a completely normal state. "It’s hard to wrap your head around, but I find all that Lantern lore hard to digest. It’s all so fucking alien. And I don’t mean relatable aliens, I mean ones with brain patterns that we can’t fathom."
He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “But at the same time. I was glad you were there, in the middle of all that, and not … somewhere that he would know to find you.”
"You were glad I was in the middle of a disaster area instead of here, where I’m not as safe," Kate translates, giving Ollie a sidelong look, though she doesn’t castigate him further about it. Instead she inhales, deeply, then exhales.
"That’s about the long and short of it." Saying it out loud makes Ollie look depressed, and with a sigh, he leans against Kate. "You wanted me to admit I’m scared, well, there y’go. It’s Walter, I can’t deny that when you’re so sure about it, and I don’t think you’re safe here. I don’t know if you should stay in Gotham where he knows to find you, I don’t know if you should be in LA or Star, either."
"You can’t expect me to go into hiding," Kate says, teeth digging hard into her lower lip. She doesn’t push Ollie away, but her posture, the tension in her muscles, indicate her displeasure—an unspoken ‘considering the risky dumbass shit you’ve done lately’, seeing as she’s still not gone off on him about his latest poor life choice. "There’s too much work to do. Better I keep him here, and know where he is, then have him scouring the country looking for me, leaving god knows how many more women in his wake."
"You being here isn’t going to stop him from killing other women," Ollie says direly. "He’ll kill exactly as many people as he thinks will get your attention or send his message or whatever he thinks will fuck you up most."
Swinging his legs off the bed, Ollie rolls his shoulders out and then shrugs, “But it’s your decision. I’m gonna go get some breakfast. I feel like corndogs.”
"So what exactly do you suggest," Kate replies, and her tone is somewhere between clipped frustration and being lost, uncertain like a child.
"And who eats corndogs for breakfast anyway," she calls after him, only reinforcing the latter tone.
"I do," Ollie calls back on his way out the bedroom, "because I’m a grown-ass man who can have whatever he damn well likes for breakfast. Corndogs or salmon tartare or champagne and weed." She hears him in the kitchen getting them out of the freezer and putting them in the toaster oven before he comes back down the hallway, one hand on the doorframe as he pops his head in to address her. "And I don’t suggest anything. I don’t expect anything. I don’t think I’m being any help anyways, so maybe somebody else will have better advice."
Heading back to the kitchen, Ollie says, “And I put two corndogs in for you, too.”
Kate scowls, the expression covering her growing concern about Ollie, because that was nothing if not a veiled statement of him hurting. She slides off the bed, finishing her cooling coffee, and trails after him to the kitchen, taking a not-that-difficult logical leap.
"What did he say to you," she says—less ask, more firm than ask, and in true married people fashion, not bothering to preface with an introduction to the topic. "Aside from likely an inevitable ‘you’re a fucking idiot’." This last is in an improved Batvoice.
He comes out of the fridge holding plain yellow mustard and grainy mustard and pauses, elbow on the door of the appliance, to look at her. “He didn’t say anything. Not even the inevitable, although that was a great simulation of it, have you been practicing?”
Ollie moves over to the toaster oven, taking two of the four corndogs out and squeezing mustard thickly on each. “I’m kinda wondering what it is that you want to say to me, though,” he says, then turns to her, raising his eyebrows expectantly. “C’mon, out with it. I’d rather get the castigation over before I try to eat.”
"Then what did he NOT say," Kate retorts. "Or whatever it is that has got you all fucking stubbornass ornery, and I’m not going to put up with it unless I have a good reason. How is it that you’re not able to help or suggest anything or whatever, because you’re clearly feeling like your self-esteem is in the shitter."
"I don’t know what he didn’t say, because he didn’t say it. And I’m not a mind-reader." Ollie licks a stray streak of bright yellow from his thumb, going back to the fridge to get some juice. "I don’t know what you’re asking me, either, because I’m not trying to be stubborn or ornery or anything."
He pours himself a glass, sloshing a bit of it over and then setting the jug down on the table, heavily, to say, “In fact, I have no idea, Kate, why it is you even feel the need to yell at me.”
Kate stares at him for a long moment. She opens her mouth, considers saying about four or five different things (go fuck yourself; are you still high; is this how the downer looks for Deep Freeze then; etc.), then closes it.
And then goes to the coffeepot, pours a new mugful, and walks out of the kitchen.
Ollie picks up his glass of juice as Kate leaves. He raises it to his mouth before putting it back down on the table hard enough to make a bang, sitting down and putting his head on the table, too.
At the sound, Kate freezes, tenses, far too hyperaware lately. After a moment she turns, comes back to stand in the kitchen doorway, not speaking.
"I’m tired, Kate," Ollie says, head still down. "Every which way a person can be tired, name it, and I’m that. I don’t have time to slow down and rest and recuperate. Bruce is all off-kilter because of losing his home and I can’t do anything about it except not make him feel bad for beating me to shit because he can’t fix it. You’re being stalked by some psycho monster from your past who’s supposed to be dead and all I can seem to do is piss you off. I gotta be the one outta the three of us to keep saying everything’ll work out and everything’ll be okay, and I’m running all over the country tracking down escaped fucking Arkhamites and dealing with goddamn fucking Shado on my own and it’s just … I’m tired. Everything hurt and I took a pill because I can’t afford to be hurt right now."
He raises his head, eyes dilated and glassy around the green. “I dunno if that’s what you wanted,” Ollie says, “but that’s all I got.”
Kate isn’t sure what to say—because she can definitely see what Ollie means—and at the same time, all of them were in a similar place. But Ollie, Ollie was never really the one to be the one to say things would be okay, to hang in there. Bruce was the one with the sheer determination and righteousness, enough for all of them, and there was no way to expect that from him now.
"I know, cielo," she says, looking back at him, the look on her face close to breaking. "I just…I wanted to know where you were at. I wanted to know what you’re thinking, because no one else is telling me, not Bruce or anyone else. But you scared me, taking that shit on purpose. I want…I want this all to be done, I want us to have a minute to breathe."
"Really?" He stands up, drawing lines through the spilled juice on the table with his fingertip. "Because you didn’t sound scared. You sounded angry." Ollie looks down at the liquid as it beads up along the wood of the table, and he continues, voice getting more and more dark as he goes along, "…and if you wanted to know what I’m thinking and where I’m at, Kate, since I’m the only one of the three of us who actually says anything out loud without being coaxed for hours beforehand, you could have just asked me at any fucking point." His hand jerks, knocking the glass over entirely, and it rolls and falls off the edge of the table.
Ollie makes a snatch for it, and ordinarily, with his reflexes? He would’ve caught it without even a blink in between. But instead he hits it with his open palm and it smashes against the dishwasher, breaking into a dozen pieces.
"Okay," Kate says, quietly, "I know. I’m sorry," but she sees where Ollie’s headed, feels her back stiffen a little and her chest start to clench up in panic. It’s the good old kind of all-too-familiar animal fear that she’s never really had in an argument with him anywhere, usually all too keen to have her blood up, except for
(there in that place, in the summer heat)
And so she bites her lip to keep down the reflex that bubbles up in her at the smash of the glass, to scream—the rest of it, a full body wince, she can’t keep from doing, from freezing in place—but she doesn’t need to worry about the sound. It’s trained full well to stay down, buried, in her chest.
Ollie startles, although it’s not the blood-deep small animal panic that Kate feels — just a shock, clearing through the pain fog clouding his eyes. “Shit,” he says, voice soft, and then moves over to painstakingly stoop down, start gathering the glass. He picks up the somewhat intact bowl and drops shards into it for a while before he looks up at Kate.
"I’m sorry too," he says. "I know you and Bruce are going through a lot. I’ve been trying to keep it together so I can be, y’know, supportive and all that. This was just … hard."
He reaches down and picks up another sliver, dropping it into the glass with a sharp crystalline tinkle. “I know he had to stop me from attacking Jason,” Ollie says, to the wet floor. “That wasn’t a problem. I’ve been on both sides of it when it comes to taking down a friendly who’s not in control of themselves. But he wouldn’t even say anything to me when he came by after, Kate. Not a word. Even after what happened, we would’ve had sex without him saying a goddamn thing.” He leans against the dishwasher, rivulets of juice soaking into the sleeve of his t-shirt. “That was — I dunno. That kinda wrecked me more than taking a beating ever would.”
"I know," says Kate, and though it’s usually a rote response, it’s the truth and the best thing she can do as she tries to stifle the way her insides have gone solid as rock, her thoughts half-frozen, through force of will. She can’t think—
She closes her eyes for a moment, tries to center, then opens them, getting herself back together. “He’s still broken, Ollie,” she says, and it’s a bit halting though anything but emotionless. “Just because he can get out of his chair and run and kick and fight and fuck doesn’t change anything else. He’s still…” The metaphor that comes to mind is a wounded animal, but she really isn’t sure she wants to go there.
"Well," Ollie says after a moment, tonelessly, "anyhow."
He makes quick work of the rest of the mess and straightens up gracelessly, mashed against the cabinets until he’s upright. “I could go get more of it,” he says, dumping the glass in the garbage. “The Deep Freeze. You know that. But I won’t, so there’s no need to be angry.” Ollie looks at his breakfast, cold on the plate even with the sunshine coming in through the window, and shakes his head as if somebody had told him to get to it.
"I think I’m gonna go take a shower," he says. "I didn’t mean to worry anybody."
Kate can feel something inside her crumbling apart, and she leans her head against the wood of the doorjamb with a softly audible thump. She’s certain she can’t give Ollie what he needs right now, isn’t even sure what that is; and she knows she’s not going to demand what she needs either, because she can’t do that to him.
"Okay," she says again. "I know you didn’t. I…I love you," she says. "I trust you. But I—I need to go lie down." Possibly sleep for more than a few hours at a stretch. Possibly cry by herself, not to be passive aggressive but because the panic needs to go somewhere.
"Yeah," Ollie says, and reaches out his hand to her as he passes, clasping hers in his swollen fingers. "I know you love me. You just don’t seem to like me much, these days.” Kissing her forehead, he says, “Go lie down, honey. It’ll be fine. You know how I go, fits and starts, I just need to get it all out and then I’m back in the saddle again. This is the last thing anybody needs on their plate at this point.”
He presses his fingertips into her palm, then heads down the hallway towards the bathroom.
"I do. But I don’t really like anything much these days," Kate admits, quietly, catching his hand carefully so she doesn’t hurt him. "Everything’s just…wrong. Skewed too far off balance."
She purses her lips, trails her fingertips against his wrist before letting go. “I’m sorry I can’t help more,” she says, moving towards the bedroom, then pausing in the hallway and looking after him. “That I can’t get it together.” And she means more than just helping him.
Ollie stops at the door to the bathroom to look at her too, and for a moment, it seems like they’re staring at each other from an unfathomable distance apart, the shadows of their Gotham condo chasing the sunlight down the walls, around the corners. He wants to go to her, curl into their bed together and fall blessedly asleep so it all stops hurting for one fucking minute, but she’s right. Everything’s too far off balance at the moment. They’d only shear into each other like rotating blades.
"I’m heading out after," Ollie says, voice echoing in the space. "I’ll see you when I get back. If you’re here."
After that, he can’t bear to look at Kate anymore, the long-held fear set in the lines of her face, the exhaustion rimming her dark eyes, the brittle look of her thin fingers against the wall. Ollie goes into the bathroom, and shuts the door.