"I never...thanked you."

"For what?" Harvey asks, his voice unusually gentle. An aftereffect of their argument, perhaps, or simply their present circumstances: a rare night alone together, lacking either Bat--a concession to Bruce's latest injuries--or the need for Harvey to run home to his newly expanded family.

Bruce has to swallow hard before he can say what he needs to. "Your son. His name. I--"

Harvey shifts on the bed, propping himself up on one elbow to look into Bruce's face. "Gilda wanted to name Steven after her father, and there was no way I was gonna name the other kid after *mine,* so--"

"Thomas," Bruce says, rolling it on his tongue and across his mind. "Thomas Dent."

"It's all right, I hope?" Harvey asks, but he's smiling with all the confidence of a man who already knows the answer. And of course, he does.

Bruce means only to agree. What comes out is altogether different. "My father...was a tall man."

Harvey nods, as if this were a logical response. "Thomas has blue eyes."

"All babies have blue eyes. Or so I've read," Bruce answers, and Harvey's grin acknowledges everything Bruce has been unable to say.

{200 words}

Thanks to Chi for some helpful chat. :)

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