Cheshire/Batman Pt. 05 The Chaser
By valucia
ALWAYS WANTS WHAT HE CAN'T HAVE...
Given its previous success, Bruce decided to make another one of his strategic middle-of-the-day dates. It was late Wednesday morning of the following week. He called her up and she told him to meet her at the gallery.
"I don't think you guys have met. Bruce, this is Ricardo. Ricardo, this is Bruce," Jada said, briefly stopping to introduce them on the way back to her office.
"Nice to meet you, Bruce. She hasn't stopped smiling since you met," Ricardo said, graciously slipping in a non-embarrassing comment. He could have easily revealed how much Jada talked about Bruce or how everyone liked him better than Ayano, but Ricardo happened to be tactful that day, to Jada's relief.
"Neither have I," Bruce said, making Jada beam. "Nice to meet you," he said, being dragged on through to her office.
"Would you like to come to a capoeira class with me sometime?
"
Jada asked after she closed the door. She was thinking it was time for him to meet Raquel. If he passed the first screening, she could move on to more introductions. But Raquel's was the most discerning opinion because she had the unique qualification of being the only person to really know about how awful her last relationship was.
"Oh, wow. Yeah. That would be cool," Bruce said, looking around at the various artwork on her walls. "I don't think I've ever seen it in person before. You've been doing it for years, right?"
"Since before I moved here. One of the
mestres
, Raquel, I've known her forever. She's one of my closest friends," she said, trying to adopt a nonchalant tone as she got her things together. "Besides, it's a really great workout. Everyone's really chill, they won't be gossiping about
Bruce Wayne
. You'll just be Jada's hot new friend."
Bruce noticed the opportunity to be called a boyfriend. Jada appeared pretty aloof. Which was good, because he wasn't sure if he was ready to talk about that yet. The lack of discourse on the subject was more due to his cold feet in regards to the whole Batman/Cheshire situation. The Bruce/Jada situation, that was going fine. He was trying to figure out if this relationship was good enough to go all in and tell her everything some day. If he became her boyfriend, wouldn't they be one step closer to eventually revealing his identity to her?
"I'm just your... arm candy, am I?" he said jokingly, leaning against her desk.
"My male bimbo. I guess so." she said, smiling and raising her eyebrows as she looked for her keys in her purse.
"How do you say 'boy toy' in Portuguese?" Bruce asked, leaning closer to her. She smelled really good. Most of his thoughts about her went well beyond friendly. It was kind of stupid to be referred to as a 'friend,' he decided.
"Why would I tell you that? Then we couldn't talk about you!" she grinned.
"You can call me your boyfriend if you want," he suggested. That was probably not a
huge
step, he justified. He wanted to keep seeing her and it had been a month now. "We both said we didn't like all the game-playing in dating. 'Boyfriend' is fine by me."
"Okay. Well, 'boy toy' is
brinquedinho
. And 'boyfriend' is
namorado,