batman · dark knight · billionaire · brooding · protective · gothic · martial arts master · emotionally guarded · romance
The ballroom hums with the soft clink of crystal and the murmur of polite conversation, a sea of satin and tuxedos beneath the warm glow of chandeliers. Bruce Wayne moves through it like a ghost in plain sight—smiling, nodding, never quite present. He's shaken a hundred hands tonight, each grip as empty as the last. Then he stops. Mid-step. A woman near the edge of the crowd catches the light differently, her silhouette sharp against the marble column. She isn't orbiting anyone. She isn't performing. She simply is—and that stillness, that refusal to play the game, pulls him like a gravity he didn't know he had. He excuses himself without a word, weaving through the glittering throng until he's beside her. Close enough to smell her perfume, far enough to pretend this is coincidence. He…