Rabbits and Morning Light

She found the scar on his left shoulder blade first.

They were lying on their sides, facing each other, her head on his arm and the room dark and warm and still. He'd slipped out of her at some point and she'd rolled to face him and her leg was over his hip and her fingers were tracing lines on his skin with the idle focus of someone reading in braille.

"Knife?" Her finger followed the ridge.

"Sword."

"Who."

"A woman in a monastery."

Her finger moved to the next one. Inside of his right forearm, thicker, healed rough. "This one."

"Sparring accident. Korea."

She found the cluster on his ribs. Three parallel lines, shallow, old. Her touch went light over them like she was trying not to wake them up.

"I'm not going to ask," she said.

"Okay."

"I'm not going to ask because I know they're not from tennis and I know you'll tell me when you're ready." She pressed her palm flat over the three lines. Her hand was warm. The magic was quiet now, just heat, and it seeped into the old scars like warm water. "You're going to tell me everything eventually."

"Probably."

"But not tonight."

"Not tonight."

She looked at his face. Brown eyes, gold flecks, close in the dark. Her makeup was smeared and her hair was tangled and there was a crease on her cheek from the pillow and she looked like she'd been through a hurricane and was fine with it.

"Okay," she said. She kissed the three scars on his ribs. Soft. Her lips warm. Then she propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at him and her hair fell across one side of her face and her breasts were bare and her nipples were dark against her pale skin and the glow was gone but her eyes still had the gold flecks and the light from the garden window put a line of silver along her jaw.

"Round two," she said.

"The bulbs."

"I unscrewed them while you were in the bathroom."

He looked at the lamp. The dead lamp with the shattered bulb. The overhead light. The bathroom light visible through the cracked door. All dark.

"You unscrewed every bulb in the room."

"And the hallway." She sat up. Swung her leg over him. Settled her weight on his hips and her hands on his chest and her hair hung forward and her face was above his and she was smiling. The real one. Both corners up. "I take threats seriously."

She was different on top.

Round 1 had been nervous, electric, magic leaking out of every surface. This was something else. She sat up straight with her hands braced on his chest and her thighs on either side of him and she rolled her hips once, testing, and he was already hard again and she felt it against her and her eyes went half-lidded.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

She reached between them. Wrapped her fingers around his cock and lined him up and sank down. Slow. Her mouth opened in a long exhale and her eyes closed and she took him inch by inch and the sensation was different from below. Wetter. Hotter. She was swollen from Round 1 and everything was oversensitive and he felt her walls grip him tighter than before and she made a sound low in her throat when her hips met his.

She sat there for a second. Full. Adjusting. Her hands flat on his chest, her breathing controlled, her eyes closed. The magic hummed under her skin but it stayed contained. A warm vibration in her palms where they touched him, steady, even. She had control this time.

She moved.

Slow at first. Rolling her hips in a long circular grind that changed the angle on every pass and each angle made her breath catch differently. Forward and her eyes flickered. Back and her lips parted. She was figuring out what worked from this position and every discovery showed on her face.

He put his hands on her thighs. She was slick with sweat from Round 1 and the skin under his palms was hot and smooth and her muscle flexed with every roll. He didn't guide. He let her set the pace. She found it. A slow steady rock that took him deep on every push and pulled almost off on every rise and the wet sounds filled the quiet room.

"You're staring," she said. Her voice was rough but she was smiling.

"Yeah."

"At what."

He looked at her. She was sitting on him in the dark with her hair tangled and her skin flushed and her hands on his chest and her breasts moving with each roll and her stomach tightening and relaxing and the silver line of garden light along her collarbone. He didn't have a word for it. He didn't need one.

"You."

Her rhythm stuttered. She caught it. Her eyes got bright and she leaned forward and her hair fell around them like curtains and she kissed him and her hips didn't stop and the angle changed when she leaned and she gasped into his mouth.

The magic hummed louder. Still controlled. Still a warm even vibration where her hands pressed against his skin. His hands slid up her thighs to her hips and held on and she sat back up and braced herself and started riding him faster.

She was louder this time. The nervousness from Round 1 had burned through and what was left was the woman who'd told him to take his pants off with her chin set and her face red. "Oh-" on the downstroke and "ah-" when she ground forward and her nails dug into his chest and the magic built and the vibration traveled down through his sternum into his ribs.

Her breathing was getting ragged. Her rolls were losing their rhythm, getting shorter, more desperate. She was chasing it. Her eyes were shut and her mouth was open and her hands were gripping his chest and the magic was building, the hum getting deeper, lower, not sparking but gathering.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I know." She didn't open her eyes. Her hips ground down hard and she gasped. "I know I'm- it's close and I-"

She lost the sentence. Her jaw clenched. Her fingers spread wide against his chest and the magic concentrated at her palms and the warmth was deep, penetrating, not the surface sparks from before but a sustained low-frequency pulse that he felt in the marrow of his ribs. In his spine. In the joints of his hands.

He gripped her hips and thrust up into her and she cried out and her head went back and the magic pulsed once, hard, a wave of warmth that radiated outward from her body through the mattress and the sheets and into the air and the temperature in the room rose and his bones were warm and his blood was warm and the walls shook.

"Zee."

She came. Quieter this time. A held breath and then a long exhale and her whole body clenched around him and her hands pressed flat against his chest and the wave pulsed again and the warmth was everywhere, deep, in a place that had no name, in the architecture of him. Her walls squeezed and released and squeezed and her legs shook and she pitched forward and caught herself with her hands on either side of his head and her face was close and her eyes were open and her mouth was open and no sound came out for a long moment and then she breathed and it was his name.

He came. Her walls were clenching and the wave was still radiating through him and the warmth was in his bones and he pushed up into her and held and the release was deeper than Round 1, slower, like the wave was pulling it out of him at the frequency of her magic.

She collapsed on his chest. Her face in his neck. Her breathing ragged, slowing. The magic settled. The room was warm and dark and quiet.

His bones ached. Pleasantly, like the ache after a long run, except the ache was inside the bone and it pulsed faintly and he knew what it was and he didn't say anything. Her magic was in him now. Whatever the proximity absorption had been doing over years of friendship and card tricks and shared meals, this had accelerated it. He could feel it in his joints. A warmth that didn't belong to him.

She breathed against his neck.

"Better?" he asked.

"The lamp survived."

"There's no lamp."

"Exactly." She kissed his neck. Lazy. Her lips barely moving. "I might have also unscrewed every bulb on this floor."

"Alfred is going to have questions."

"Alfred already has questions. Alfred had questions when I walked past him at nine o'clock with bare feet and went straight to the terrace."

He thought about Alfred standing in the kitchen with his tray and the expression that communicated everything without moving a muscle.

"We should sleep," he said.

"I can't move."

"That's fine."

She stayed on his chest. Her weight was light and warm and the magic ran warm against his skin where they touched and outside the window the garden was dark and a bat crossed the glass and the house settled around them, creaking in its joints, and the warmth in his bones faded slowly into something he could almost forget was there.

He woke up alone.

The sheets were warm where she'd been. Her clothes were gone from the floor. His shirt was missing from the chair by the window. Sunlight was coming through the curtains in long gold bars and the broken lamp glass was still on the nightstand, catching the light.

Downstairs, the coffee maker was gurgling. The one Zatanna had programmed to run at seven-thirty during her last visit because she said anyone who made coffee after seven-thirty was a sociopath.

He pulled on sweatpants and went downstairs.

She was in the kitchen.

His shirt. The blue one from the chair, buttoned wrong, hanging to mid-thigh. Her legs bare. Her hair was in a knot on top of her head held together with what looked like a chopstick from the takeout drawer. She was standing at the counter with her back to him, humming, making something that involved eggs and a pan she'd found and an amount of butter that Alfred would disapprove of.

Alfred walked in from the dining room carrying a tray of yesterday's teacups.

Alfred's eyes moved from Zatanna to the shirt to the bare legs to the chopstick to the butter in the pan. His expression did not change.

"Good morning, Miss Zatara." He set the tray on the counter. "The eggs are in the second cupboard."

Zatanna turned around. Her face went red. Not the gradual blush from last night but an instant full-body flush that started at her ears and hit her collarbones in under a second and the toaster popped. Violently. Two pieces of toast launched out of the slots and hit the ceiling and Alfred reached up without looking and caught both of them, one in each hand, and set them on the counter.

"I'll make the eggs," Alfred said. He moved past her to the stove with the smooth economy of a man who had been navigating awkward mornings in this kitchen for decades. He cracked eggs into a bowl. The shirt, the toast, the scorch mark on the pan went unmentioned.

Zatanna stood by the counter holding a spatula and looking like she wanted to disappear into the floor.

Bruce walked in.

Alfred looked at him. One eyebrow rose approximately two millimeters. It stayed there for half a second. It came back down.

In that half-second, the eyebrow communicated everything Bruce needed to know about Alfred's awareness, his approval, and his intention to never speak of this morning for the rest of his natural life.

"Good morning, Master Bruce." Alfred cracked another egg. "Coffee is ready. Miss Zatara has been kind enough to begin preparations."

"I burned the first batch," Zatanna said. Her voice was higher than usual. "The pan is fine."

The pan was not fine. The pan had a scorch mark on the bottom that hadn't been there yesterday.

"I see," Alfred said, and put the pan in the sink and retrieved a different one without comment.

Bruce poured coffee for two. Put one mug in front of Zatanna. She wrapped both hands around it and her fingers were warm and the mug steamed and she looked at him over the rim with her face still red and the chopstick askew and his shirt buttoned wrong and the kitchen bright with morning light.

"Morning," she said.

"Morning."

Alfred served eggs and toast and fruit and tea for himself and coffee for them and breakfast for three on the kitchen table because the dining room felt too formal for a morning where the toaster had become a projectile weapon. They ate. Zatanna talked too much because Zatanna always talked too much when she was nervous, about the show at the Iceberg Lounge and a booking in Metropolis next month and whether the butter in Alfred's eggs was salted or unsalted and how her father used to make eggs with paprika and did Alfred know that Giovanni Zatara had once turned an omelet into a dove during a show in Vegas and the dove had eaten the omelet.

Alfred said "Indeed, miss" at the right intervals and refilled her tea without being asked. Bruce ate his eggs and listened and his bones still ached with the warmth that didn't belong to him and his shirt looked better on her than it had ever looked on him and the kitchen was bright and the coffee was good and somewhere behind him Alfred was wiping down a counter with the precise movements of a man who understood that sometimes the most important thing a butler could do was not say a single word about the toaster.

She left after breakfast. Kissed him at the door, quick, on the mouth. Then longer. Then her hand was on his chest and the magic pulsed once and she pulled back.

"Thursday," she said. "I'll bring food."

"You always bring food."

"I always bring food." She smiled. Both corners. "Rabbit emoji."

She walked down the front steps in her own clothes now, her jacket over the white t-shirt and her jeans and her boots and she turned at the bottom and waved and the sun was behind her and for a second the light caught her hair and it had the same blue-black edge it had on the terrace last night and then she was gone.

He stood in the doorway. Alfred appeared beside him with a fresh cup of coffee.

"Charming young woman," Alfred said.

"You've known her since she was seven."

"Indeed. Charming then as well." Alfred handed him the coffee. "Shall I order replacement lightbulbs, sir?"

"All of them."

"Very good." Alfred walked back inside. Bruce stood in the doorway with his coffee and the morning sun on his face and the warmth in his bones and the taste of her chapstick on his mouth, something cherry, and Thursday was three days away and he was already counting.