PB & J Sandwiches
PB & J Sandwiches
by DebC
Summary: The library was quiet, but the man standing in the door way didn’t think for one minute that meant it was empty.
Series: Promise of a Rainbow
Author’s Notes: Angelsgracie and I are writing a Batman Au of our very own. This is the beginning of the love story between two of the original characters we created. They’re minor characters in the main series, but she wanted to know more about heir own stories, so am slowly writing them.
Thanks to Medie for the beta read.
April 2005
The library was quiet, but the man standing in the door way didn’t think for one minute that meant it was empty. He’d already seen her through the security camera. Entering the room like a ghost, so silently. Shyly reaching for a new book, sinking into one of the overstuffed chairs and hiding behind the high back. He’d watched her do pretty much the same thing every days since she’d been brought here.
“Miss Shelly?” he called out for her own benefit, softly, so as not to frighten her. Shelly was a beautiful woman, but so fragile. She spooked easily. He remembered the day they left her mother’s home: the door shutting behind her had caused her jump out of her skin and cling to him as if he were rescuing her from fire. What he remembered more was the feel of her head resting — if only briefly — on his chest and how his heart had pounded in his ears.
Rustling came from behind the chair and a brief glimpse of dark hair appeared as she sat up straighter.
“It’s me, Birch,” he said, although he doubted she’d forgotten him. “Mr. Pennyworth” the bodyguards never called Mr. Wayne’s butler by his given name. “sent me down here to see if you wanted anything. There won’t be a formal lunch today, but there’s food in the kitchen…”
She sat up fully and turned around to look at him. Her eyes were so wide and expressive… and mostly full of hesitance. It was the same look she’d fixed him with the day Mr. Wayne had asked her trust him with her safety. ‘Just for one night, ma’am. Just in case,’ Bruce had said, but it had been enough of an implication of her worst fears for her to agree.
“I was just going to make myself a sandwich. Could use the company, if you’d like one too?”
*****
Shelly ate her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in silence. She didn’t know what to say to this man… or any man for that matter…so she let him talk while she ate. He’d made her sandwich for her… had actually lined up every kind of jelly, jam and fruit spread in the fridge and asked her to choose one and then choose between chunky or smooth peanut butter.
“My baby sister always liked the chunky”, he’d told her when that was what she’d selected. “Ruthie always had to have chunky with strawberry preserves. The kind with big chunks of whole strawberries in it?”
Shelly’d nodded, and busied herself with pouring them both tall glasses of milk. It was simple, not the fancy lunch they’d have gotten if Bruce or Grace had been home that afternoon, but she didn’t mind. Simple was familiar. Simple was good.
So was this… sitting here listening to Birch simply talk. He drifted from his sister’s sandwiches to sports to the weather… and she couldn’t help but enjoy it. He made her feel like smiling with his easygoing, everyday manners. She did, at last, venture a small smile here or there. She couldn’t help it, really. He’d been so nice to her.
He smiled back, glad to see a glimmer of something other than fear on her lovely face. She really was, too. Lovely. He longed to tell her so someday.
“Here… let me get that for you, Miss Shelly,” he said, stopping mid-sentence when they were finished with their food. He gathered up the plates and glasses and took them to the kitchen, with her following behind him. She didn’t know how she knew it, but he continued his story about a thunderstorm he’d be caught in once. He didn’t even look back to see if she’d followed along, just kept right on talking as he put the dishes in the dishwasher.
This, oddly, had been the first day Shelly had been inside Bruce’s kitchen. The fact that it had not one, but two dishwashers amazed her. But then, this entire ‘house’ had the same effect on her most of the time. “How convenient,” she commented, and couldn’t stop herself from adding “Mark never got around to buying me a dishwasher.”
It was the way she said it that made Birch stop his tale and stare… first at the appliance in question and then at her. He knew without asking for any clarification that Mark hadn’t just gotten around to it. He’d probably refused to buy it with a caveman’s mentality that she didn’t need it so long as she had hands. “That’s a shame, ma’am,” he said in an even voice. “They’re handy to have around sometimes. Maybe your next house will have one.” It did, Birch knew that for a fact. He’d been to Bruce’s country stables on more than one occasion. Mr. Wayne loved to ride, though in more recent years, he’d been doing it less and less. The kitchen was fully equipped and regularly maintained.
His words may have been neutral, but only because Noah felt that this was what she needed right now. A neutral friend and not… well… not what he had found himself entertaining thoughts of in his mind. Maybe he shouldn’t have been thinking anything of the sort, but he hadn’t been able to help it. Since the day he met her, he’d been drawn to the soft-spoken woman. He felt very strongly that there was — or could be, in time — a connection between them.
In time. Shelly needed time… to find herself and happiness again. Noah was certain that she would, given the remarkable new start she’d been given. He wanted to be a part of it, too, but he knew better than to forcibly insert himself into her life. Being the brother of four sisters had taught him that force rarely won the fair maid’s heart. Especially not when she’d been burned once already.
How did that go? Once bitten, twice shy?
