Vanitas is, in Bruce's experience, very straightforward. He doesn't bother with deflection or evasion and seems to regard them as a waste of time- time better spent charging straight forward. It's a dangerous kind of honesty. It makes him easy to read and easy to predict, but it also threatens to be Vanitas's undoing. Some challenges can't be met by direct force, some require verisimilitude. Patience.

Bruce watches his profile as the boy looks down at his plate, presumably struggling with the nausea that rolls his stomach and wonders if he might have been this once. How different would he be now if he'd been alone? If he hadn't had Alfred to watch over him.

Instead of staying where he is, Vanitas chooses to set both drinks on the countertop and move away, reintroducing a boundary between them- a safer margin. Bruce knows wordlessly that he has hit a mark, whether Vanitas knows he's been wounded yet is another matter entirely. Perhaps that only underscores the problem. He's been hurt too many times to feel it. His head shakes.

"I'm not talking about being whole." He's heard this explanation before, not directly, but in parts across the network. Vanitas isn't shy about his origins. He doesn't hesitate to tell others what he is and by extension there's no moment where Bruce needs to ask for clarification and no space where he balks at the idea. Even without the same connection to darkness and light, Bruce doesn't believe in being whole. More full, perhaps, or more empty. But not whole.

His one good hand reaches for a nearby mug. He'd made coffee some time earlier and it's gone cold. Good breeding and blue blooded privileged not withstanding, he empties the contents into a small pot, then clicks the stove on once more.

"I mean the balance between pain and pleasure. Of experiences."