[The dock is there. Water sloshes up onto it, sloshes over; Bruce hears it the same way he'd heard the rope landing- it's different. Something that doesn't belong. But he doesn't look at it. The figure waiting for him is still a silhouette, pulling him out of the dark, and now that he's here, this close, the tension coils. This is the point where people are tempted to get sloppy- they think they're safe before they are, that they're finished sooner than they should be. Bruce's fingers have gone numb and they're half curved, like a claw reaching up from the surface of the lake and there's something painfully appropriate about that too.
To see on the outside what he knows is underneath.
The rope drops in the moment that Bruce's fingers slap hard against the wood, an effort to stay moored in the second before a hand reaches back for him. They meet in the middle, calloused palm in calloused palm and there's something at once clumsy and sure about it. The complete certainty he has to place in this man and his own inability to feel the world around him, to dig in.
Bruce looks up, pupils huge and black in the perpetual night- but it does nothing to dull the attentive knife of his gaze.
It's his face he wants to see. This face and every detail.
Water comes up around him as they pull and Bruce forces his legs to work, wills his limbs to get underneath him and push himself up. His elbow lands first, his fingers spasm in the man's grip but he keeps on following until at last, lean and shuddering, he's out- sucking in a rattling, uneven breath.]
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To see on the outside what he knows is underneath.
The rope drops in the moment that Bruce's fingers slap hard against the wood, an effort to stay moored in the second before a hand reaches back for him. They meet in the middle, calloused palm in calloused palm and there's something at once clumsy and sure about it. The complete certainty he has to place in this man and his own inability to feel the world around him, to dig in.
Bruce looks up, pupils huge and black in the perpetual night- but it does nothing to dull the attentive knife of his gaze.
It's his face he wants to see. This face and every detail.
Water comes up around him as they pull and Bruce forces his legs to work, wills his limbs to get underneath him and push himself up. His elbow lands first, his fingers spasm in the man's grip but he keeps on following until at last, lean and shuddering, he's out- sucking in a rattling, uneven breath.]