kinkfest | Of Men and Masks [Batman fandom, Batman-centric, PG]

Title: Of Men and Masks
Author:

raja815
Rating: PG
Word Count: 238
Warnings: None, really
A/N: Sorry this is so late; I had an incredibly awful February. Also, I think it's been about eight years since I wrote for DC fandom. Wow.
Prompt: February 15 - Batman, Batman: fitting in - he likes to think he needs other people but he's not so certain that's the truth.

In the few pitiful hours of sleep he caught in the early hours of the morning, he feels adrift between personas, and occasionally grants himself a quick pretense of introspection; who is he, really? Who is the hero and who is the persona, the mysterious man in the mask?

He occasionally tries to persuade himself that he is still, far and away above it all, Bruce Wayne, just a man with a couple of skeletons (a couple of winged skeletons, if you will) hanging in a closet buried deep under his estate. It’s in these moments that he forces himself back, looking at parties and meetings and gatherings and the people they brought to him, and thinks about how their interactions fuel him. How conversation awakens him, how the sultry glances from women in sinfully well cut dresses titillate him, and how much the high-society flings and delicious one-night stands really mean to him, deep down. He gathers all this in his head and drifts off, confidant that at heart he does need them, as they need him.

But in the moment before he really sleeps, before he descends into that endless cave of shrieking, beating wings that make up his dreaming life, the façade falls away, and he lets himself be as he really is, silent, alone, and fully efficient, and knows without a doubt who is really the man and who is merely the mask.