( @yourabattoir asked: [ shudder ]  –  for the sender to shudder a little at some gentle touch from the receiver. / from louis, but reversed! )

it's been rare that someone could affect him like louis does. louis, who makes him go against his better judgment. louis, who invades his thoughts more often than he doesn't — louis who causes a shudder to pass through him at the smallest touch. he hopes he isn't too obvious.

armand looks up from his notes, a smile slowly revealing itself across his face. he'd sat alone in the theater's auditorium, finding some solace in the quiet. at times, he preferred it over a closed office door. the air feels different somehow, when he's around, as if he drains oxygen from the room, leaving him somewhat lightheaded.

( how silly for a nearly 500 year old vampire )

❝ sit with me, ❞ he offers, setting his papers down on a free seat.

At the frame of his office door: "Accuse me" his arm fans out toward the hall, ushering her: "or excuse me. I will not rebut words best left to dead stock coffee mugs."

there's certain hours where gotham is beautiful. most people would say it's never, that it's grime at all hours. maybe there's beauty at the tops of skyscrapers; most people wouldn't know. maybe it's just because the bat's one of the only people who flies over it but isn't at the distance of a plane. close enough to make out the details. lights on in windows. people making their way home past any decent hour. arguments between friends, picking up children, first kisses.

that's what stretches out below them, at the top of her apartment building. at any point here he could throw himself off, glide just so around a few other skyscrapers, and land with a perfect look at the gotham gazette's building. but he doesn't, not yet.

gotham's a big city. it drowns most people. most individual voices are so small that it doesn't matter. and all the people with power ranging from imagined—the mayor, mostly—and terrifyingly real—the penguin, as a good example—can't hear it.

claire temple works the night shift. she lives in a small apartment, and she keeps to herself. she's good at her job. he only saw a few complaints in the hospital database, and they read more as patients disgruntled about things besides their actual care. he looked after the first time she stitched him up, sitting there under wayne tower, makeup still smeared around his eyes, carefully picking through years of records about temple, claire, night nurse.

he doesn't say much for a few moments.

"guess you have to find the right people to listen." people who can make change, who know the right levers to pull. "not to make it sound like it's easy. it's not. most people don't think gotham can change, unless it's for the worse."

sometimes he even believes it. but the truth is that he knows—if there's no path left for gotham's criminals to improve, where does that leave him? the boy who decided to become a bat?

erik looks up at them, glancing over the edge of the newspaper in his hands. wet blanket. it's true, he's never exactly been frivolous. it's not in his nature; he's not had the inclination for spontaneity. still, the insinuation manages to prickle him. if only because he knows her so well.

lips press into a thin line and he quirks an eyebrow at mystique. the paper crinkles and rustles in his hands when he folds it, setting it down on the table. " try me. "

wild is not selina’s typical. one might assume so, and one might be wrong. she actually tends to be pretty low-key, prefers a friday reading and perfecting a pot of tomato sauce. but bars are the easiest ways to garner information and better acclimate to her surroundings, and that’s pretty important in a place this new.

wild is not selina’s preference a pretty good chunk of the time. she likes to be in control, but there’s a pull that she can’t quite contain. she gravitates viciously toward whatever alights her most, sparks her. and hollyanne is spending the weekend with her dad so of course, of course selina has nothing to focus on. she can’t sway her attention anywhere else.

the light in the little house clicks on, flooding the drab, yellowing wallpaper she plans on replacing with the halogen that gives her a headache. she doesn’t seem to care much when the door slams open behind them both, clumsy, crashing a hole in the wall with the knob’s unwanted force. she kicks it closed with her heel and doesn’t let go of allyson even once in the process.