Poker Face | Bruce Wayne

twenty six

Bruce had a plan. He was going to land on his hands, probably shatter a finger or a wrist, somehow fall into a rollout, avoid all of the chunks of debris, and also communicate the entire thing to Oliver in about six seconds while falling at roughly twenty miles an hour.

Bruce never said he had a good plan.

But suddenly he found himself crashing into Oliver's chest, the wind getting knocked out of him as they hit the concrete. Pain seared through Bruce's shoulder as it slammed roughly against the ground, and he couldn't stop from tumbling over himself— dress shoes weren't exactly ideal for sixty-foot falls.

He finally came to a halt, coming to his senses and putting his hands out to stop himself. His entire body screamed in pain. He didn't have time for pain. He assessed his surroundings— they were probably a good thirty feet from the building, which had more or less stopped falling apart, only the first ten or eleven floors still remaining.

His breathing was labored. Leg in pain. Shoulder dislocated. Possibly shattered. By all other means, he was relatively—

Shock ran through his body.

Oliver.

He whipped around, seeing the blond a few feet away from him, crumpled against a large chunk of concrete. He wasn't moving. His mouth was bleeding. His eyes were shut.

Bruce had trained himself for years not to panic in the face of danger— to keep calm and collected under any circumstance, which had worked well even in a battle against a mind-controlled Superman in Apokolips during a war against Darkseid— but seeing Oliver very possibly dead made Bruce's heart rate shoot through the roof, and his body caved into every response to fear that he thought he had bred out of himself.

"Queen?" Bruce couldn't get his voice above a whisper.

There was no response.

It was like Bruce hadn't just broken a few bones because he made his way over to the blond with no pain whatsoever, adrenaline coursing through his veins because holy shit what if he wasn't alive—

"Queen?" His voice was panicked. Bruce couldn't find it in himself to care.

He couldn't see Oliver breathing.

"Oliver?"

Bruce knew the signs— he saw it in others but never thought he'd see it in himself— the inability to calm your heart rate and chest pains and dizziness— Bruce was having a panic attack.

Bruce knelt down next to the blond and shook him. He felt like he was choking. His hands were shaking. "Oliver?"

He shook him more violently. "Oliver?"

Nothing.

"Shit." Bruce couldn't catch his breath. He sat back on his heels, somehow managing to find his phone in his breast pocket with a now-shattered screen, and dialed a number he thankfully knew by heart. There were a few rings, and although it was right next to his ears, it sounded a hundred miles away.

"Bruce!" The worry-stricken voice of Devin came over the line.

He could barely hold the phone straight.

"Bruce! Where the fuck are you?"

"Uh, back right alley."

"Fuck—okay. I'm coming right now, where's Oliver?"

Bruce was silent.

"Bruce! Hello?"

"I..." Bruce's eyes scanned over the blood pouring out of the other man's mouth. He felt sick. "Dev, I— he's not moving."