fille_fatale | ( IC CONTACT )

The timing is good, and the food comes before she feels like she has to let go. The food itself smells great, though she will, in true Gothamite fashion, act as if it's just good enough.

Selina doesn't waste time serving herself, but she pauses when she sees the reactions playing across Bruce's face.

"What?" Her eyes dart between the two men. "What's wrong?"

Bruce addresses the owner one more time, saying something Selina will undoubtedly recognize. A simple thank you and then they're alone again as he retreats. "He said you have a beautiful smile," he confesses. "He also thinks you're my daughter."

She doesn't bother trying to cover her smile when she catches the old man's meaning. She does, at least, hold back the last.

"He should get his eyes checked," she says, keeping her voice light. "We don't look anything alike." A pause, and then Selina shrugs: his eyesight was good enough to pay her a compliment.

None of that stops the smile. "You are looking gray around the edges, though."

He can take the good natured ribbing. The gray doesn't bother him as much as it used to. "My father started going gray in his late 20s. I consider myself lucky I made it to at least 40."

"No idea what he had to go gray over." She murmurs it, momentarily distracted; at least forty, he said. He's probably more than twice her age, now, and she can still remember when she was taller than him. It's strange, like deja vu is strange, only the weird part is that she hasn't been here before.

The moment passes, and the smirk comes back full force.

"I should probably just be glad you haven't gone full on silver fox on me."

Looking back, he knows he wasn't the easiest child. Disappearing for hours on end without telling anyone where he was going was fairly routine. He must have driven them crazy with worry. "Don't wonder off, dear," his mother often told him, maintaining her composure. He's drawn out of the self-reflective moment by her smirk.

"Give it time."

"I'm not really the patient kind."

She doubts there's a Selina Kyle out there, in any universe, who is. "It kind of suits you, anyway." She reaches up, fingers brushing the gray along his temple. "Makes you look--" she purses her lips, looking for the right word, and shakes her head.

"Never mind. Distinguished makes you sound dull."

He stills beneath her fingertips, ignoring the flutter in his stomach and the tightness at his chest.

It's a word he's heard used before. He supposes there are worse things to be called. "I'd settle for 'handsome'."

"Bet you would." She gives him the kind of smile that says she agrees, but she's not going to say it.

She's also trying to rewrite him in her head, to put the cute kid she remembers out of mind and put the handsome man in his place. They're not the same person, she knows that; she's not sure if she's convincing her head or her heart of that fact.

Leaning back again, Selina tends to her food before cocking her head at him. "So what kind of crazy has Gotham been up to, lately?" She's learned a few things. They're hard to believe.

That telltale smile of hers is better than a verbal confirmation.

"What kind of crazy are you interested in? Social? Business? Politics? I could talk your ear off for hours. Gotham's never been short on wild stories."

"You're telling me." She says it wryly: the Narrows were here home for a long time. Wild stories is pretty much everything she remembers.

"I was thinking more--" She doesn't let herself say criminal, and quirks her mouth to the side. "Metropolis had Superman, right?" And her tone says that she still thinks that's a special kind of bullshit. "I heard talk about some guy who dresses up in a cape, here."

Talking about himself in third person when it comes to his nightly persona has become second nature. His response is as smooth as silk. "Batman? He's old news."

Selina snorts, shaking her head. "Yeah, well not to me." The capes were definitely kept to a minimum in her memory. "What's the deal, then? Is he in with the cops?"

"I don't think so. But there's a signal they use that sits on top of Police Headquarters to get his attention. I hear nobody has access to it but Jim. It's been taken down a couple times but it always goes back up. It seems to cycle with the mayoral opinion."

Jim. She's almost taken aback.

"Jim Gordon? What makes him so special?" She wouldn't be surprised to find he made his way back into the PD, but it's a big city, and a lot to learn."

"The same." At least in name. The man she knew likely bears little resemblance to Bruce's long time friend.

"He's Police Commissioner. Although I don't know for how much longer. He's thinking about retiring."

The image drags a laugh out of her. Gordon was a young man the night the Waynes were murdered, and that...well, it does feel like a short lifetime ago. But the idea of Gordon retiring?

“Wow. Never thought this city would be clean enough for him to be a—“ she waves her hand, not entirely sure of the rankings and titles in the police department. “A captain, let alone the commissioner. And he made it long enough to retire?”

She whistles, shaking her head. “I’m kind of impressed.”

From what he gathers, Jim Gordon was a stand up kind of guy in her Gotham as well. It pleases him to hear it. He hopes it's a universal constant. "He was instrumental in cleaning up the department. He's got to be in his... seventies? Good man."

The declaration is similar in tone to his comments on Donald Sanders all those years ago, sincere and wholehearted.

Everyone has their demons, especially in Gotham. Selina knows a little of Gordon's - she just didn't care that much, unless he was trying to get her into the system. Fortunately for him, though he tried harder than just about every cop she's ever dealt with, he was also a lot more willing to listen to a streetwise kid who claimed to see a few murders.

She recognizes his tone of voice. "You two are still friends?" It's not a surprise, really - but the idea is kind of...nice. He's not the kind to hold onto friendships easily.

Jim is probably the closest he'll ever come to having a normal friendship. There are things he hasn't said that Jim just knows and the trust between them is absolute.

He nods. "Have been ever since..."

Bringing himself to say it is still difficult on occassion.

Selina just nods. The mean streak in her, the one that wants to say after your parents died, is quiet when her hackles aren't raised. Instead, she murmurs, "It's a whole new Gotham," and figures it's probably time to change the subject: this Gotham weirds her out, fascinates her at the same time, and she knows he won't like the idea of Gotham that she wants to settle into.

Crossing her legs, she lets her foot rest against his calf under the table. "Still just you and Alfie?"

It's just the sort of thing she used to do, the kind of contact she used to crave. Her foot against his calf. Her toes skating across the tops of his bare feet. Her nails on his thigh. A connection. A tease. A moment of happiness.

He almost pulls away but doesn't, not knowing yet if the gesture carries any meaning.

"Still just the two of us," he confirms. "If he knew you were back, I'm sure he'd send his greetings."

"I bet." Five years ago, she had less than tender feelings for Alfred Pennyworth, which was very mutual, at least at the time. It was warranted, but had made knowing this Alfred all the stranger. Now, she's just trying to forget that past.

"You can say hi for me." Satisfied when he doesn't pull away, Selina just lets her foot press against him, maintaining the point of contact. She's always very much lived up to her nickname, reluctant to be touched but just fine with initiating contact.

"Kind of thought you'd have found a model to move in by now."

He smiles, amused by the thought. Maintaining a reputation as a ladies man has been ridiculously easy over the years but Selina was the closest he ever came to settling down. "I've never been interested in a trophy wife."

“If I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t believe you.”

Obsessive research was always more his wheelhouse than hers, but it was impossible to totally avoid the celebrity obsessed news. “Papers call you a playboy.” She doesn’t try to stop the grin turnin her lips. If someone had asked her what she thought Bruce Wayne would be when she first met him, she’d never have come up with that.

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