Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Janet MacIntyre was smoking in her car in the high school parking lot. It was, for a lot of reasons, infinitely preferable to eating in the cafeteria. She missed out on lunch, but the cigarettes kept her from getting hungry, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Just one more year and she'd never have to see any of these people ever again.

She nearly screamed when the passenger side door opened, and someone sat down next to her. She didn't recognize him. She had, unconsciously, started holding her cigarette like she was planning to stab him in the eyes with it. He looked at the cigarette. He looked at her.

He was clearly another student, but he was fucking huge. Maybe on the wrestling team. If it hadn't been for the small amount of baby fat still softening all the edges of his face, she might have confused him for a teacher. He dressed like a teacher.

"Sorry," he said. "In retrospect I can see how that might be unsettling for you." Army brat, maybe. Something about the way he talked, or the way he carried himself, or the way his eyes bored holes into whatever he was looking at. Stiff as a board with a nail in it.

"No fucking shit," she said. "Get the fuck out of my car."

"It'll only take a minute."

"I don't care what you've heard," she said, "if you don't get the fuck out of my car I'll set your fucking face on fire."

He was taken briefly aback, confusion only clear in a split-second dip of his eyebrows and blinks that fell out of sequence. "I—no. I'm not—I need you to tell me what he looks like."

"What?"

She didn't know how she could tell that he was exasperated, because his expression had barely changed since he'd sat down. "I don't know anyone's names, I don't know what anyone looks like. I don't go to games. I could check last year's yearbook, but everyone looks different already. I need you to point him out to me."

An anxious twisting in her gut that she couldn't quite pinpoint. "What are you talking about?"

"I know his name's Tyler Sinclair, I know he's the quarterback. I don't know what he looks like or where he sits during lunch. That's why I'm here."

She sucked on her cigarette even though it would make her nausea worse and not better. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Don't worry about it."

"I'm worrying about it," she snapped.

The upward flick of his pupils did not quite count as a roll of his eyes, and yet. "Bruce Wayne."

"What?" It was the kind of question that was more about disbelief than a lack of understanding. "The rich kid?"

Something in his jaw twitched. "Yeah. The rich kid."

"Aren't you a sophomore?" Being shorter than a fucking sophomore felt like an insult.

"Yeah."

"Are you on the wrestling team?"

He frowned. "I'm in chess club. Sometimes the debate team."

"Sometimes?"

"It's complicated. Your cigarette just went out. Can we go."

She dropped the butt out the car window. "Can't you ask someone else?"

"Sorry," he said. "I'd be more comfortable if you pointed him out to me."

"Why? Why the fuck are you in my car, what the fuck are you even talking about?"

"The faster you do this for me," he said, losing his patience, "the faster I and everyone else will leave you alone. All you have to do is walk with me to the cafeteria and point him out. That's it. Can you do that?"

"Go fuck yourself," she said, more for his tone than what he'd actually said. She wasn't about to be patronized by some fifteen year-old. I and everyone else. She got out of her car, slammed the door and headed back toward the building. Bruce closed his door much less violently when he followed her.

"That isn't an answer." Teenaged boys weren't supposed to stand that tall, were supposed to slouch and gangle and be made mostly of knees. Unsettling, that was the word he'd used. He was fucking unsettling. A CEO in the body of a boy, walking like he had somewhere to be.

"I'll point him out because it's on my way," she said, "and after that you can leave me the hell alone." She did slouch, stomped in heavy boots, wore jeans that were falling to pieces over tights with holes in them. He wore a watch that was probably worth more than her car. Opposite ends of the spectrum, both entirely out of the range of what might be considered fashionable.

He didn't respond, just followed her in silence. She kept looking over her shoulder at him, unnerved to have him looming up behind her. He switched to walking next to her, but that just made it more obvious how much he had to slow himself down to match her pace. A fucking sophomore.

The closer they got to the cafeteria, the worse her stomach twisted, tried to wrap itself inside-out around her spine. But Bruce moved ahead of her suddenly, stood in the doorway so she was left grateful and resentful that she could hide behind him.

"Over there," she muttered, gesturing vaguely, as if to point with intent would somehow draw attention.

Bruce narrowed his eyes in the direction she'd indicated. "Which one."

"The redhead."

"There are three redheads and two strawberry blondes."

She huffed, tried to look around him to get a better look at the person she least wanted to look at. "The—the blue shirt."

"Talking to the blonde?"

"Yeah."

He started taking off his watch. "Thanks," he said as he dropped it into his pocket, started walking toward the boy in question.

"What—?" Janet started to follow him, although she didn't mean to, didn't want to be navigating through tables of talking teenagers. Bruce was rolling up his shirt sleeves, neat as could be. "What are you doing?" He was walking at his own pace, and so she felt like she was jogging to keep up with him. "Bruce," she hissed, "what are you doing?" But he kept moving, and she stopped before she came within ten feet of the table he was headed towards. She couldn't bring herself to go any closer.

"Tyler," he barked, and when he turned Bruce Wayne suddenly and without warning punched Tyler Sinclair directly in the nose. Janet recoiled, tensed, covered her face with her hands with an involuntary gasp of horror. The sound of it seemed to fill the room, although it couldn't possibly have, the unmistakable crunch of something breaking. Tyler staggered back as his friends moved away, joined the circle that somehow always formed like a wall around a high school conflict. Maybe they'd have tried to help him, if they'd had more time to process what was happening.

Tyler's retaliatory punch was a clumsy lashing out, and even though it made contact, even though she could hear it somehow over the clamor of shouting students, it wasn't obvious to look at Bruce. He didn't even move out of the way, just took the hit and then took Tyler's arm. Her eyes couldn't follow what Bruce did, maybe he was fast or maybe she was just confused and trembling, but Bruce's leg knocked Tyler to the ground and his arms twisted and Tyler screamed, a sound so deadly serious that it made the rest of the room quiet. By the time she could register that Tyler's arm was bent the wrong way, Bruce had pinned him to the linoleum and started hitting him with what could only be called precision. Again and again, and it wasn't even a fight, it was a massacre. How long had it even taken? One minute? Maybe two? And he wasn't stopping.

Janet was pulling on Bruce's shirt before she realized what she was doing, trying to grab his shoulder with hands shaking too much to function. "Bruce, stop."

And he did. Immediately. Froze with his fist still raised to look over his shoulder at her. His nose was bleeding. "You want me to stop," Bruce asked for confirmation, sounding exactly the same as he had before. Like nothing had happened, like his face and his knuckles and the front of his shirt weren't covered in blood.

"Stop," she repeated.

Bruce looked down at the bleeding mess he'd made of Tyler's face. "Okay." He stood, all one quick motion, and turned to leave exactly as as he'd come. The teachers hadn't even made it through the crowd yet. The crowd that swept closer all at once, converged on Tyler and left her feeling trapped and claustrophobic.

Janet jumped when someone grabbed her arm. Carly, acting much too friendly for the things Janet knew she'd been saying. "Janet," Carly asked, "are you fucking Bruce Wayne?" She looked thrilled by the prospect. Janet yanked her arm away, and when she went to push people out of her way they moved of their own accord. Gave her the same wide berth they were giving Bruce, who'd only stopped long enough to grab napkins off a table.

"What the fuck was that?" Janet demanded when she was close enough that he'd hear her. He was wiping blood from his face, from his hands, leaving a trail of crumpled red paper down the hall. "What the fuck did you just do?"

He covered his nose in napkins, covered those with his hand and then did something to make it crack again. This time he winced. Then he started to unbutton his shirt, like he wasn't walking through a school building. "Don't worry about it."

Someone should have been stopping them. A teacher, a security guard, someone. Except that he was Bruce Fucking Wayne, and he was walking like he had somewhere he needed to be, and it was like authority figures couldn't even see him. Their eyes slid right over him, looking for problems easier to solve, and as long as she looked like she was with him the aura extended to her.

"I don't even know you," she said, and she didn't know why she was angry.

"That's fine." He pulled off his shirt, and the blood hadn't seeped through to the undershirt beneath it. He tossed his shirt in the trash as he walked out the door to the parking lot. His knuckles were still raw, there were still traces of blood on his face; he spit blood onto the sidewalk.

"Why did you do that?" He hadn't even known who Tyler was, had never met him, but he'd beat him half to death like he hated him. But, no; hate wasn't that neat, that methodical.

"He deserved it." Like that was any kind of explanation at all. He pulled his watch out of his pocket to put it back on as he walked. His arms looked bigger without sleeves. The whole effect was off-kilter, expensive clothes and a sleeveless undershirt and minute traces of violence without even messing up his hair.

"You know what people are going to think now, right?" For the first time he stopped to look at her, and she had to skid to a halt because she'd been chasing him. "Why people are going to assume you did that?" she added, gesturing back toward the school. He said nothing, kept looking at her, and she realized he was waiting for an answer. "Everyone's going to assume that—that we fucked, or that you want to fuck me, or something. They already think it, by tomorrow the whole school is going to think we're a thing."

Bruce looked back at the school as he considered this. Then he looked back at Janet. "So?"

"So?" she repeated. "I don't even know you, what the fuck do you mean so?"

He shrugged. "People will leave you alone if they think it's true."

"That's not—no—I don't know, what the fuck even—do you? Is that what this is, do you want me to be fucking grateful or something?"

He started walking again, along the sidewalk and away from school. "Not really."

She followed him again, but didn't try to keep up or chase him. "You're fucking crazy," she called after him.

"Probably," he agreed as he crossed the street, just loud enough that she could hear him.

Janet stood on the corner and watched him leave.

Chapter Text

Janet found Bruce in the back of the library, at one of the tables meant for studying. Where he was actually studying. He may have been the only person in the school's history to have done so. She had a hunch that this was what he did every lunch hour. He had headphones plugged into a CD player, head down over a notebook, pen moving constantly.

She sat down across from him, propped her chin up on her hand and waited for him to acknowledge her presence. He did not. She reached out to steal his canned protein shake so that she could look at the label. She didn't get a chance, because without looking he took it back and set it exactly where it had been, even turning it so the label faced the same direction. Finally, he hit pause, pulled his headphones down around his neck. "What is it." He did not actually look up at her, still writing.

"Do you do this every lunch break?"

"Yes."

She cocked her head to the side, tried to get a better look at what he was writing. Working on problems out of a book, tiny numbers and lines on graph paper. She tried to read the running head of the textbook title upside-down. "You just sit here and do homework?"

"No."

"You're doing differential calculus for funsies?" she suggested, thick with sarcasm.

"I'm doing differential calculus because organic chemistry requires too much of my attention," he corrected. He was still writing. She realized that he didn't have a calculator out. And he was using a pen. He hadn't crossed anything out that she could see. "Did you want something." he asked.

"Carly told everyone I blew you under the bleachers." She wasn't even mad about it. Half curious to see what he'd do now that she'd been proven right.

He still didn't look up. "That doesn't even make sense," he said. "I live in a mansion. You have a car. Why would we choose the bleachers."

"That's your problem?"

"It lacks creativity. Did you want me to do something about it?"

She shrugged, even though he wasn't looking to see her do it. "I just thought I'd let you know."

"Now I know. Was there anything else?"

Christ. It was like trying to talk to her dad. "My friend Stacey and I were thinking about going to the mall later," she said. "Did you want to come?"

His pen stopped for the first time. He looked up just enough that he could raise an eyebrow at her. "What."

She blinked. Slowly, as if his problem had been with her pronunciation, she said: "Do you. Want to go. To the mall. After school."

"Why."

She made a face. "To go? I dunno. It's the mall."

He narrowed his eyes at her in something like suspicion. Finally, he went back to working on equations. "I'm busy."

"All day?"

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

His left hand grabbed another notebook, flipped it open to the bookmarked page, turned it around and slid it across the table towards her—all without looking. She pulled it closer, brow furrowed. It was some kind of... planner? Calendar? To-do list? Except that it was all handwritten, everything completely straight despite the unlined pages. His handwriting was tiny, printed neat as a magazine. There was a weekly schedule with every minute accounted for, meals and exercise and classes and clubs, study hours and practice times and meetings that it didn't seem like a teenager ought to be having. He'd even slotted in showers and brushing his teeth. Who the hell needed to know exactly when and for how long they'd be brushing their teeth? Why was he spending so much time in the shower? Everything done in different colors that she could only assume meant something, since he didn't seem like the type to appreciate rainbows for their own sake.

"You keep a list of weekly personal goals?" Obviously he was fucking weird, but this crossed the line into completely alien.

"Yes."

"This only has six hours for you to sleep."

"Yes."

She flipped back through older pages, previous weeks, carefully checked boxes and color-coded habit trackers. The previous week listed Tyler Sinclair on the to-do list. It was checked in red pen.

"This says you only drank seven glasses of water last Wednesday," she said.

"It was a lapse."

She looked back at his weekly planner, at his scheduled activities for the day. "If you skip this run and violin practice, and move gymnastics down to where you have this walk, that's like four hours where you can hang out." Why did he need to have a run and a walk, anyway? That was way too late to be out walking, besides.

"No."

"You'd be walking around the mall. And you can afford to miss one day."

He reached out to take his journal back, slammed it shut as he reclaimed it. "Absolutely not."

Janet rolled her eyes. This had now become a whole thing that made her seem much more invested in the idea than she was. She was regretting not just going out for a cigarette the way she usually did. On cue, her stomach growled.

Bruce paused again, looked up from his notebook. "Did you not eat?"

She gestured to the table where they were sitting. "I'm here." Maybe it had escaped his notice that they did not sell lunch in the library, or that not everyone carried around canned meal substitutes.

He frowned. Then he reached into his bag, and slid a lunchbox across the table. It was lacquered wood and looked like it had cost a fortune.

"I'm not stealing your lunch."

He'd already gone back to work. He seemed determined that she not interrupt his allotted unnecessary math time. It wasn't preventing him from holding a conversation. Maybe that was what he'd meant by not taking too much of his attention. "If you don't eat it, I'll give it to someone who will."

She took off the lid as much out of curiosity as anything. It was, unsurprisingly, absurdly fancy-looking. "Why did you pack a lunch if you're not going to eat it?"

"I didn't."

"Who did?"

"Butler."

"Your butler."

"Yes."

"Can't you tell him not to?"

"It's complicated."

Janet picked up a carefully arranged sandwich and looked it over before taking a tentative bite. At which point she hated him all over again for the fact that he could refuse to eat something so good.

"If you want me to buy you clothes," Bruce said after a long silence, "just tell me how much you need and I'll write you a check."

She had to take a minute to swallow before she could respond. "I'm not trying to get you to buy me things."

"Uh-huh."

Janet was legitimately offended. "I'm not some greedy bitch trying to scam you." He said nothing. "You put Tyler in the fucking hospital."

"He belongs in jail."

She ignored that, because she had to ignore that, because if she thought about it she'd get upset all over again. "Look, you probably didn't notice because you're you, but since then? No one's touched me. Like, at all." Not even Ray in homeroom, and she considered that a goddamn miracle.

Bruce stopped writing. "Touched you," he repeated.

"Yeah, okay, that doesn't sound like a big deal," she admitted. "It would just be cool if we could just, like... go to the mall. And do mall stuff. Because usually it's just me and Stacey, and everyone goes to that fucking mall, and we end up getting kicked out after like two hours for starting shit or whatever."

Bruce narrowed his eyes at his notebook, but kept the pen off the page. "You wanted a bodyguard."

"No, it—I don't know." She stabbed a fork too aggressively at what she thought might be arugula. "That sounds shitty. I just figured you could get a pretzel or something. Read a book or look at chess sets. Whatever you do when you go out, except, with us."

"I don't go out."

"Yeah. I'm getting that."

Bruce shut his notebook and his textbook, stacked them neatly and set them aside as he opened his journal back up. "Were you planning to go straight there after school?"

"Probably, yeah."

He held his pen over his daily schedule. "Until seven at the latest, then. Taking your car?"

"Do you not have a car?"

"I have a lot of cars. I can't get my license until next year."

Right. Fifteen. Just tall. And Type A as a motherfucker. "Wait, so are you coming?"

The look on his face suggested he was stoically enduring great physical pain as he crossed out items on his schedule. "Only until seven."

Huh. "Cool." He was adding some kind of note beneath the day. "You can pick the music, if you want," she suggested.

"I don't listen to music."

"… seriously?"

Bruce glanced up at her, followed her eyes to his CD player. "I was listening to a book."

Janet put the lid back on his lunchbox. "That's fucking weird."

"Yes. Are we done here?"

"I guess," she said, standing up.

"Great." He pulled his headphones back up onto his head, hit play to start his book again.

"Nice talking to you too, dick," she muttered as she left. He'd already gone back to his textbook.

For someone who was doing her a favor, he made it really hard to like him.

Chapter Text

"I'm not convinced that this is intended for human consumption."

"Stop being a baby," Janet chided from the lower stair on which she sat. Bruce continued to stoically contemplate the pancake-wrapped sausage-on-a-stick.

"If you want me to buy you a better breakfast," he said, "you can just tell me instead of trying to torture me into it."

"That's probably the best breakfast in the cafeteria, so you can either eat it or admit you're too spoiled," Janet said. Bruce narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. She had apparently prodded exactly the right spot, because he finally took a bite.

There was a click and a whirr as Kimber took a picture with her little toy camera. Not that it made for an interesting picture, since Bruce was just squinting into the middle distance. Janet and Zach were both snickering already. He clearly wanted to spit it out. He had not yet made any attempt to chew. Kimber pulled out the tiny picture her camera had produced, peeled off the back and stuck it without asking to Stacey's binder. Stacey turned pink, but didn't protest.

"It doesn't count if you don't swallow it," Janet warned him. "You might as well get it over with."

"You know," Ethan said, "my ex-boyfriend used to tell me that exact same thing."

Zach, sitting beside him, looked scandalized. Bruce did not seem to appreciate the humor.

"Which one?" Zach demanded. "I'll kick his ass." Since Zach was both the shortest person present and wearing a cast on one arm, this was even more doubtful than usual. Zach, despite numerous attempts, had never successfully kicked the ass of anyone.

"Don't try to kick Derek's ass," Ethan sighed. "You know I don't like hospitals."

Bruce finally managed to force the bite down. "That," he said, "is not food."

"It's better with syrup," Janet said, nudging the little plastic cup nearer.

"Derek used to say that, too," Ethan added.

"I'm gonna kick his ass," Zach said again.

Bruce pointed the barely-eaten breakfast stick at Kimber. "We had a deal," he reminded her.

"If you ate it," Kimber countered. "It only counts if you eat the whole thing."

There was a nearly imperceptible narrowing of Bruce's eyes. Though they'd all become comfortable taking advantage of Bruce's shielding aura, they were still aware that he was allowing them to do so. Kimber made a face, and picked up her smoothie to take an unhappy sip. Apparently satisfied by this concession, Bruce took another bite of his unsatisfactory cafeteria breakfast. "I hate peanut butter," Kimber muttered. The bones of her wrists jutted out at angles as she jabbed the straw deeper into the cup.

When Bruce stood, he waited in silence while everyone else collected their things. He didn't outright escort them anywhere, but he did take an unnecessarily roundabout route to class. One that took him past the doors of everyone else's morning classes. First Zach and Ethan together, and then Kimber; Stacey took the longest, because she was always determined to say something and never did.

Bruce was under the mistaken impression that Stacey Nguyen suffered from some kind of anxiety disorder.

Janet disliked following Bruce around like a confused duckling. However, she really liked being left alone. Bruce Wayne's personal space was a tangible thing, a privacy bubble in crowded hallways.

"Thanks for doing that for Kimber," Janet said. Bruce said nothing. She knew better than to expect a response. "You should eat more real food, too," she added.

"That wasn't real food."

"You know what I mean, though," she said. He didn't respond. "I'm pretty sure you have a disorder." She said it vague and off-hand, as if she didn't actually care; she wasn't sure if she did. He was rich, and he was eating. No one got to that size without eating. He was still better off in every way than most of the people she knew. She could not rationally explain why his careful lists of calories and vitamins felt so wrong to look at, seemed so inhuman.

He stopped outside the door to her first class. "Probably," he said as she went inside. He was as matter-of-fact about it as he was about everything else.

"Hey, Janet!" someone shouted from the other end of the hallway. "How's Wayne's dick taste?"

Before she could say anything—not that she was going to—Ethan put a hand on her shoulder, cupping the other around his mouth. "Better than yours," Ethan called, his voice carrying. "He washes his!"

Some of the boys surrounding Ray laughed.

"At this rate," Janet said, "people are going to start assuming we're all fucking him."

Ethan snorted. He was as tall as Bruce, and his hair made him taller, all long limbs and lank. "Because when I think 'master of seduction', I think of Bruce Fucking Wayne."

Janet laughed.

"This," Bruce said, "is entirely too complicated to be practical."

"The point isn't to be practical," Annie said. "It's to be pretty. Now get more hair on the left, like this, and cross it over." She demonstrated on Janet, fingers more nimble than they looked.

It was hard to tell, but Bruce might have looked displeased. Despite his complaints, he wasn't doing too badly with Stacey's hair. "I'm not convinced that this is a useful life skill," he said.

"If I have to learn how to do a suplex," Rachel said, "you have to learn how to do a French braid."

"Fair's fair," Ethan agreed, though he'd already finished Rachel's hair. Bruce narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.

"Someday some girl is going to be really impressed by the fact that you can do that," Kimber said, from where she and some other girls sat on the living room floor. There was a very good chance that they were going to get nail polish on an antique rug.

"... I'm a billionaire," Bruce said.

"Knowing you, you'll want the one person in the world that doesn't care about money," Zach said.

"But who does care about my ability to French braid."

"Yes."

"Is this hypothetical person Rapunzel?" Bruce asked. Tasha snorted.

"Next I'll teach you how to give Ethan cornrows," Kimber said.

"Wait, what?" Ethan asked, a hand going defensively to his hair.

"All right," Alfred called from the hall, moving nearer. "I'm heading out, I should only be an hour—" He paused in the doorway of the living room, frowned. He held up a finger to do a headcount, brow furrowed. "Are there... more of you?"

"We're new," Karen said, gesturing to herself and Julie.

"Ah." Alfred looked to Bruce, who was either engrossed in trying to braid hair or pretending to be. "Any dietary restrictions I should know about?"

"I'm a vegetarian?" Julie said.

"Oh—well that's no trouble," Alfred assured her.

"She actually means pescatarian," Tasha interjected, "and what she really means is that she only eats fish sticks and french fries."

"... ah." Alfred's face looked remarkably neutral. "Fish sticks." He looked at Bruce. Bruce did something small with his eyebrows that made it look like he'd shrugged. He could do that, sometimes. It was sort of impressive.

"You know," Alfred suggested, "we could always order pizza?"

The girls came to a stop as unfamiliar boys walked on to the court.

"Hey, we're trying to play," Tasha said, resting the basketball on her hip.

"You can play when we're done," said a boy in a baseball cap.

"We could play together," Rachel suggested.

"No," said Julie and two of the boys in unison.

"Get off the court," Annie said, crossing her arms.

"You get off the court," another boy said, "and let the people who actually know how to play use it."

Julie had lost all patience. She turned, and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Bruce! These guys are being douchebags!" She had a very large voice for a very small ginger.

Bruce had been sitting on a bench with a book and a highlighter. He looked up when Julie called for him.

"Oh, come on," Rachel protested. "They haven't done anything that bad yet." She'd known Bruce the longest, had the least patience for his form of problem-solving.

"We're sooo scared," mocked a boy in cargo shorts, with accompanying jazz hands. He gave up on the razzle dazzle when Bruce came closer, and it became clear that he was both taller and broader than any of them.

Even if the white button-down and slacks made him look like a stray Mormon.

"You should come back later," Bruce advised them.

"Fuck you, dude."

Bruce looked the boys over. Then he knocked the largest one's feet out from under him. He picked him up by the ankle, so that his head hung above the concrete, and waited.

There was a lot of flailing and cursing, none of which accomplished anything. The smaller boys could not decide if they should try to help, or if that would only result in their friend's head meeting pavement.

After a minute, the boy Bruce held gave up. At which point Bruce gently set him back on the ground.

It was a bit like watching someone break a horse.

"You should come back later," Bruce repeated.

"Whatever, man," the largest boy spat, scrambling to his feet. The boys retreated, grumbling as they went, and the girls all watched them go.

"You should play with us," Julie said.

"No."

"That kind of thing might not happen if you did," Rachel pointed out.

Bruce hesitated.

"And you can learn how to do this!" Tasha said, and as she said it she spun the ball on her fingers until she could balance it on one.

"Why would I want to do that."

"So you can impress chicks?" Julie suggested.

"I'm a billionaire."

"Yeah," Tasha agreed, letting the ball fall into her palm, "but are you a billionaire... who can dunk?"

Annie giggled, a stark contrast to Rachel's wheezing bark of laughter.

"I'm going back to my book," Bruce said, but before he could Tasha passed the ball to him. He caught it, but otherwise remained motionless.

"Try to make a basket," Annie coaxed.

Bruce looked down at the ball. Then, reluctantly, he tossed it.

It went straight in.

"Oh, bullshit!" Julie said, as Tasha went to retrieve the ball. "That was a lucky shot, do it again. Actually, here, back up and then do it again."

Tasha passed him the ball. He backed up. He did it again.

"What the fuck!" Julie was outraged. "If you've secretly been on the basketball team this whole time, I'm gonna be pissed."

"I'm in chess club."

"Okay, you know what?" Julie picked up the ball and shoved it into Bruce's hands. "Go stand there and take a shot." She pointed to the middle of the court. Bruce obliged by standing where she ordered.

Then he landed a three-pointer.

"What the fuck!" Julie threw up her hands in disgust.

"Was that not what I was supposed to do."

"What are you bad at?"

Chapter Text

"Where's Bruce?" Ethan called toward the house.

"This is your fault," Zach said instead of answering, pointing at Janet as he came down the porch steps. There was a rhythmic banging noise, but that wasn't unusual. Zach lived in a trailer park; there was always some kind of a weird noise coming from somewhere. Somewhere in the distance, someone was playing an accordion, and badly.

"What?" Janet asked, confused.

"It was your idea to meet at my house," Zach said.

"Your mom's the only one who doesn't care if we smoke!" Janet reminded him, still not clear on why he was mad at her. As if to prove the point, Stacey blew a smoke ring. Rachel was pulling into the driveway to park her car next to Janet's.

"Until today," Zach said, "all I had to do was not get arrested and not knock anyone up, and my mom thought I was a saint. But you're late, and Bruce showed up a half hour early—"

"I told you to give him the wrong time," Janet interrupted. "He's always early."

The door opened as Zach's mom came outside, holding a wooden tray with drinks on it. Zach turned, perking up briefly. "Is that a root beer float?"

Mrs. Lloyd smacked his hand away from her tray. "This isn't for you," she scolded. "Bruce!" she called as she stepped away from the house, standing on her toes. She was a very small woman.

The banging noise stopped. After a second, Bruce became visible at the edge of the roof. His shirt was missing in action. Stacey immediately dropped her cigarette to crush it into the grass.

"Why is Bruce on your roof?" Rachel asked as she came up behind the others.

"Mom mentioned it was leaky," Zach said bitterly. "Next thing I know, he's reroofing the goddamn trailer. It's a trailer. Who reroofs a trailer?"

"I made you something to help you cool off," Mrs. Lloyd said, holding out the tray so he could see. Bruce squinted down at it. "You've been working hard, honey, take a break."

"Honey," Zach hissed toward Janet, accusatory.

Bruce scratched the back of his head, looked to the newly-arrived group. "Okay," he said, and without warning he stepped off the edge of the roof. Stacey squeaked in alarm, but he landed on his feet in the grass.

"Don't hurt yourself!" Mrs. Lloyd scolded.

"Sorry." He picked up the glass, used the straw to prod at the contents.

Janet used her elbow to nudge Stacey in the ribs. Stacey did not seem to notice, because she was busy staring. Very obviously staring. Janet gave up on nudging, and outright jabbed her. Stacey snapped out of it, moved to hide behind Janet as if that would be less obvious than turning red. The fact that Stacey was the taller of the two didn't help matters.

"So how long do you think this will take?" Rachel asked.

Bruce looked up from his drink. "If you want, I can give you some money and you can go without me."

Ethan rolled his eyes. "We're not going to take your money and leave you."

Bruce blinked. "Why."

"Because that would be a dick move?" Janet said.

"Huh." Bruce sipped his root beer float. "Might take all day."

"Shit," Zach said, and his mother smacked him upside the head. "Mom! I'm seventeen, c'mon."

"You live in my house," Mrs. Lloyd reminded him.

"You know," Rachel said to Zach, "if you'd fixed the leak yourself we wouldn't be having this problem."

"Exactly," Mrs. Lloyd said. "Don't go complaining when it's your own fault for being lazy."

"How is that lazy?" Zach protested. "I don't know how to fix a roof, where would I have learned to fix a roof?"

"Habitat for Humanity," Bruce said almost absently, still trying to remember how floats were supposed to work. It all looked very unappealingly frothy and he couldn't remember if that was normal. "They've been doing restorations over by Old Town."

Zach barely ducked out of the way as his mother tried to smack him again. "You hear that?" she said. "He does charity. And here you are can't even fold your own laundry."

"That's kind of sad," Ethan agreed, and Mrs. Lloyd looked vindicated.

"It's not like he does his own laundry!" Zach pointed out, wide gestures toward Bruce. "He's got a butler. I'd have time to build houses, too, if I had a butler."

"Restore houses," Bruce corrected. "Alfred doesn't do my laundry."

"What?"

"Because never doing my own laundry would turn me into an incompetent manchild?" Bruce seemed to be under the impression that everyone had been forced to sit through a speech about this at least once.

Rachel was snorting in barely stifled laughter, her hands over the lower half of her face, a sound that made it seem as though she had a cold. All assembled turned their attention to her to try and figure out what was so funny. "Zach is more spoiled than the guy who lives in a literal mansion," she said finally.

"I have been spoiling you," Mrs. Lloyd said, a fire in her eyes.

"You see?" Zach said. "You see what you did? It could be worse, you know, I could be in prison right now."

"Don't bring your brother into this."

"Can we help?" Janet asked. "It'd get done faster with more people, right?"

Bruce seemed lost as to what to do with his empty glass until Mrs. Lloyd took it from him, set it on the tray she'd rested one-handed on her hip. "I think that roof has a low weight limit," he said. "You could go to the hardware store and get me a nail gun."

Janet frowned. "How much are those?"

Bruce reached into his back pocket for his wallet, then offered her a card. She had to step closer to get it, and behind her Stacey inched forward as well. A very subtle, definitely not obvious way to get closer to a shirtless Bruce.

"This is your black card," Janet said, exasperated.

"Yeah."

"Bruce, you can't just give me this."

His brow furrowed slightly. "Why."

She rolled her eyes, might have thrown up her hands if she weren't terrified of the amount of power the little metal card represented. "What if I just took it and bought... I don't know, a car or something?"

He considered this. "Okay."

"Bruce!" Janet said, horrified both at what he'd said and how much she was sounding like her mother. "No."

Bruce looked to where she'd parked, then back to her. "Your car kind of sucks, though."

She made an exasperated sound, because he was missing the point by a mile. "When someone says 'buy me a car' you can't just be like 'kay'."

He shrugged. "It's fine."

Janet couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that infuriated her about the exchange. The way he threw money around like it meant nothing, like he was trying to buy friends, except that he didn't want friends and maybe he was just trying to pay them to leave him alone. But it wasn't just money, it was so many other things that he would just agree to. He carefully set aside hours in his schedule for them, and then he just did whatever they wanted.

It made her feel selfish. She couldn't tell what he was getting out of this. Anyone else, she'd assume they were trying to get laid.

"I'll get you a nail gun," she said, putting the card into one of the safer inner pockets of her coat. "But that's it."

"Alright." Bruce turned to head back toward the trailer without another word, jumped enough to reach the edge of the roof and pull himself up. Behind Janet, Stacey squeaked helplessly.

"Bruce!" Mrs. Lloyd scolded. "Don't hurt yourself! We have a perfectly good ladder, you know!"

"Sorry," he said. He didn't sound like he meant it.

"Anyone else want to go to the store?" Janet asked.

"Zach is going to be busy," Mrs. Lloyd said before he could respond. Zach slumped, looking defeated.

Ethan was craning his neck to see on top of the roof. "You know," he said, "maybe if I stayed on top of the ladder I could still help?"

It was a cheap ploy. He was almost as bad as Stacey.

"Sure," Bruce said, non-committal.

"I can help!" Stacey offered finally, her voice pitched so high it was barely audible to human beings. "I'm light so maybe I can be on the roof?"

She was absolutely going to be a liability instead of an asset. Bruce frowned as he tried to get a better look at her. She was still trying to hide behind Janet.

"We can try it," he said, and Stacey practically swooned.

"Rachel?" Janet asked.

"Yeah, I'll go with you," Rachel said. "We're taking your car, I don't want you smoking in mine."

"You should quit," Bruce said, just loud enough that Janet could hear.

"Go fuck yourself," she said automatically. Then she pointed at Zach. "Next time, just give him the wrong time."

Nothing good came of giving that boy free time.

Chapter Text

Bruce had refused to wear a Halloween costume. Julie's solution to this problem was to put bunny ears on him. Julie was not good at taking no for an answer, and did not seem to mind that her sexy bunny ensemble had been rendered incomplete.

"I remember doing that when I was a kid," Annie said, looking out the window at the trick-or-treaters streaming toward the mansion. "Wayne Manor was everyone's favorite because you gave out full-sized candy bars." She was wearing a pink princess dress that she probably would have worn all the time, if it weren't completely impractical.

Bruce was only half-listening, staring into the middle distance. "That was Mom's idea," he said. "Dad wanted to give out something healthy." Dispassionate and matter-of-fact; if it upset him to think about them, it didn't show.

Ethan was taking his little brother out trick-or-treating; Janet was taking her niece. No one else had anywhere to be. If they'd been the kinds of teenagers that got invited to parties, they wouldn't have needed Bruce.

"Isn't there a liquor cabinet in this house?" Zach asked. He claimed to be Scarface. He looked like one of Bruce's accountants. He was the only one watching Frankenstein on the oversized television.

"Yes."

"Let's break into it," Zach said.

"No."

"Alfred might just let us have something, if we asked," suggested Julie.

"No," Bruce said again. "Not until I'm eighteen."

"Have you asked before, or is that a personal rule?" Rachel teased, doing something with her eye makeup. She claimed to be dressed as a witch, but she mostly looked like Janet and Stacey did the rest of the year.

"Personal rule," Bruce answered seriously.

"Ugh," Rachel said suddenly, shutting her compact mirror. "I give up, smoky eye is beyond me. I don't know how to girl."

"I can show you," Kimber suggested. She was some kind of Victorian cat vampire. No one felt confident enough to ask for clarification. Bruce assumed she was just wearing whatever she'd thought would be cute. It was impossible to deny that her makeup was flawless.

"Oh, goodie," Zach said with some disgust. "Makeup and no beer."

"Want me to do your makeup?" Julie asked him, a glint in her eye.

"God, no," Zach said.

"I bet Bruce would let me do his makeup," Annie said.

"Sure."

"That's not a fair comparison," Zach complained. "Bruce would let you punch him in the dick if you asked."

"Bruce, can I punch you in the dick?" Julie asked immediately.

"I'm sure you can," Bruce said, "but I can think of some things I might like better." He said it in such a flat way, same as he ever did, that it was a moment before Julie gasped dramatically.

"Did Bruce Wayne just flirt with me?" she asked.

"That's what it sounded like to me," said Kimber.

"Is it flirting to suggest I want a handjob?" Bruce asked. It was a serious question. Rachel snorted.

"It is," Annie confirmed. She was emptying makeup out of her purse, being now determined to actually make Bruce look as pretty as his bunny ears demanded.

"No one ever gets that excited when I want a handjob."

"That's because you just say 'hey, touch my dick'," Julie said with some disgust. She looked petulant about Zach's refusal to play along. Kimber and Rachel were sitting on the floor so that Kimber could draw along Rachel's eye with black kohl.

"I don't have anything pale enough for him," Annie complained, holding up palettes the color of cocoa powder.

"Don't look at me," Kimber said.

"You can use mine," said Julie, retrieving her own purse to dig through it. "I don't think he's that much darker than me."

Annie squinted at Bruce's face assessingly. He did not seem discomfited at all. "What are we going to do about those eyebrows, though?"

"Thread 'em," Rachel suggested. Zach and Bruce were the only ones who didn't laugh.

"I should," Annie said.

"I don't know what that is," Bruce said. Annie's answer was to wind floss around her fingers and twist it, sliding the twisted part back and forth. "That looks like a torture device."

"Scared?" Julie taunted.

"I do it every week," Annie said, waggling her eyebrows. They were impressively precise arches. "I'll just do it a little bit so you can see what it's like."

"Why do I need to know what it's like."

"So you know how impressive pretty girls are," Kimber said. Annie was trying to figure out the best way to arrange herself to keep her hands steady. She settled on very nearly climbing into Bruce's lap, one knee on the couch beside him.

"I'm already impressed."

Zach was suddenly interested. "Hey, wait, if you're going to be sitting in my lap you can put whatever you want on my face."

"You're so fucking gross," said Julie, her nose wrinkling.

"I'm not even in his lap," Annie said. "I don't want to crush him." At this, Bruce frowned, his eyebrows furrowing. "Don't do that, you have to keep them straight." His face obediently returned to impassivity. She positioned the threads carefully, then twisted a clean edge onto the top of his left eyebrow.

"Ow." If she hadn't known better she might have thought he was being sarcastic. She lined up his other eyebrow and did it again. "Ow."

"Do his upper lip!" suggested Julie.

"What." Bruce seemed appalled.

"That's the one that really hurts," Annie explained.

"Let's not," said Bruce. "You can sit down if you want," he added.

"I'm fine," she said, holding up Julie's foundation to see how well it matched his face.

"You're not heavy."

"I'm super heavy," she countered. "Normally I'd want to put primer on you first, but I don't think we brought any, soooo..."

"Are you actually trying to teach him how to do it?" asked Zach, incredulous.

"It's a useful life skill," Kimber said. Bruce had shut his eyes to let Annie apply foundation with her fingers.

"You're so pale. How do you even leave the house without bursting into flames?"

"I can live in a mountaintop mansion without being a vampire."

"Do moths flock to you in the night because they think you're the moon?"

"No comment."

"I'm going to use some bronzer so you look less dead."

"Thanks."

"He needs eyeliner!" Julie reminded her.

"I'm getting there, you can't rush art. Bruce, open your eyes." He did so, but immediately recoiled from the pencil in her hand. "I'm not going to stab you in the eye, you just have to stay still."

"I don't think I'm physically capable of letting you put that near my eye."

Annie sighed. "Do you want to try doing it yourself?"

"That might be better," he said, taking the pencil from her. She held up a mirror for him. "What am I doing."

"Try to make it look like this," she said, pointing at her own eyes. Bruce looked at her eyes like he was performing a complex analysis, then looked at himself in the mirror to try and copy it. "Oh my god, no, that's way too far away from your eye. It needs to be right where your lashes are."

"This seems unsafe."

"Wipe it off before you add more! You're giving yourself raccoon eyes!"

"Maybe I want to be a raccoon for Halloween."

"No one wants to be a raccoon, ever."

"Raccoons are a perfectly acceptable animal."

"Bruce, you just—you look like you got punched, now."

"It's a work in progress." His left eye turned out better, a proper thin line on each lid. His right eye was an absolute mess. "Should I make it match?"

"No! You disaster zone." She dropped the mirror and took the eyeliner from him. "You can't be trusted anymore."

"I take back what I said earlier," said Zach. "This is actually really entertaining." He'd grabbed a bag of popcorn from the popper in the corner.

"You're lucky I'm good enough to fix this," Annie said. "Watch and learn."

"I'm watching," Rachel said. She and Kimber had finished what they were doing and were now engrossed watching the debacle.

Annie gave up on kneeling on the couch, and sat on Bruce's lap. If he noticed the concession, he didn't say. She used a cotton swab to carefully remove half the eyeliner he'd applied, then tried to blend it out until it looked passable. She did the same with his other eye, frowning in intense concentration.

"Annie, you're a wizard," Kimber said. Annie, meanwhile, used a bright red lipstick on Bruce's mouth. It was a lot like painting a mannequin.

"There," she said finally, satisfied. "See?" She held up the mirror again.

Bruce narrowed his eyes at his reflection. "Am I supposed to be Bunnicula."

"Yes," Julie declared with clear relish.

"Huh."

Annie nearly jumped out of her skin as Bruce put his arms around her, something he had absolutely never done to anyone as far as she was aware. Then he stood, bringing her with him. She shrieked in surprise, dropping everything to cling to him. "Bruce!"

"See? Not heavy."

Bruce rolled onto his back, chest rising and falling rapidly as he caught his breath. "Shit."

"What?" Annie didn't mean to sound offended, but she did.

"I did that wrong." His eyes were on his ceiling, and he rubbed at one of his shoulders.

"How did you do it wrong?" she asked, offense replaced with amused incredulity. She pulled his comforter higher to cover herself up. There wasn't any point to being modest, but she was still self-conscious.

"Did you finish?" he asked. Annie didn't answer, pursing her lips in awkward silence instead. "I did it wrong."

"I liked it," she said. She'd liked it a lot, in fact. It was a bit mean, when she knew that Stacey had a crush from hell on Bruce. Her plan was that Stacey would never know. It wasn't like they were going to go steady. Stacey would never do anything about it anyway, because it was the sort of crush that made it difficult to even talk around a person, and those were always useless. Extra useless when Bruce needed to be told directly. In ten years, Annie was sure, Stacey would still be smitten without having ever said a word to him about it.

Which was a mean thing to think. That didn't mean it wasn't true.

Stacey was two years older than him, anyway. That made it weird. Leave the sophomores for the sophomores.

"Give me a minute," he said, "and I'll try again."

Tentatively, she snuggled closer to him. He didn't object. His bed was enormous. It couldn't possibly have been his childhood bedroom, but she didn't think it was the master bedroom, either. The walls were sparse. "Have you done this before?" He'd seemed like he had, and that was part of the appeal. He was handsome, of course, and nice in his odd way. He could pick her up like she was dainty.

Mostly, though, he seemed ideal for experimentation. She knew she wanted something, but she didn't know what it was yet. Bruce was exactly the sort of person who'd let her do what she wanted, wouldn't say anything mean or tell anyone or do any of the other million things a boy in high school could do to ruin her life.

"Once," he said. "Kind of."

"Kind of?"

"It got weird."

"Oh."

"She wasn't weird," he added, chivalrous as ever. "It just got weird."

"Do you still see her?" She thought of everyone she knew and tried to imagine any of them sleeping with him before her. Despite popular rumor, it definitely wasn't Janet. Julie, maybe, but he seemed like he'd know better.

"She moved."

"Oh. That's too bad."

"Yeah."

That he seemed to miss the mystery girl hurt her feelings in a way difficult to quantify. "Am I a decent consolation prize?"

His eyebrows dipped. "You're not a prize. You're a completely different person."

There was a loud knock on Bruce's bedroom door. "Master Bruce," Alfred called from the hall, "is Miss Davis in there with you?" There was a note of censure in his voice.

"Yes," Bruce called back. "We're having sex."

"Bruce!" She smacked him on the arm. "Don't just say that."

The hall was silent for a moment. "I hope that you meant to say 'had'," Alfred said finally.

Despite how casual he sounded, Bruce was definitely turning red. "No."

Again, a pause. "I fear that it may be my duty as your guardian to put a stop to any and all tomfoolery," Alfred apologized.

"She didn't finish," Bruce said, voice projecting impressively.

"Don't just tell him that!"

Alfred's sigh could be heard through the door and across the room. "I've no intention of raising a quitter," he said, "but if it's assistance you require, I'm afraid I really must draw the line."

Bruce laughed. It was almost immediately muffled covering his reddened face with both hands, but it was unmistakably a real laugh. It started with a snort and it turned into a bark, and it looked much more his age than Annie thought she'd ever seen him.

"So which one of you is actually in charge here?" she asked.

Bruce's voice was still muffled. "If you figure it out, let us know."

Chapter Text

Bruce had never actually been to Gotham Academy. He was the first one born to the name Wayne to have attended a public school. The Waynes had helped build a school just so they'd never have to.

His mother had been possessed of very strong opinions about rich boys who went to rich boy schools.

Bruce stared at the darkened trophy case. He stared, specifically, at one of the pictures in the back. The fencing team, the last time they'd had a Wayne on their fencing team. A teenager towering over the other teenagers, none of the swagger Bruce associated with his father. No smile. Just hard edges and cold fury. He didn't look like the Thomas he'd become. He looked like Bruce.

Bruce had seen a lot of pictures of his father as a young man. They were littered about the house, on the walls and in albums. He wondered, for the first time, if Gotham High School might have some of his mother. Old club photos, old yearbooks. He'd never thought to look. He didn't think he'd ever seen a picture of his mother before she'd met his father. Would she look more like him, the way his father did?

He couldn't imagine it. He felt as if his mother had been born with her hair in a twist and starch in her skirt. She couldn't have been a teenager, the way he was a teenager, the way Thomas had been a teenager. Messy and angry and overwhelmed by the weight of the whole rest of his life.

He couldn't linger. He wasn't supposed to be there. It was two in the morning on a Sunday. If he wasn't careful, he'd run into a student sneaking out of the dorms.

Aside from the student sneaking out of the dorms that he was there to see.

Security was actually awful. Simple alarm system, inconsistent guard coverage.

His steps were slow and quiet through the darkness of the library. It was quiet. It should have been. It smelled faintly of a wet fireplace. It should not have.

Tattered pages and traces of soot.

Bruce stopped at the table that seemed the most likely suspect. He dropped the bag that he had brought with him to the floor.

A small hand emerged from under the table to pull it under.

Bruce waited. He watched what he could see of the library, though there was little risk of anyone finding them. Rustling and whispered voices and one poorly stifled half-hysterical giggle.

It was Zatanna who emerged first, looking not at all ashamed of herself. She was wearing one of his mother's old dresses. It wasn't one she'd particularly liked, or worn often. It was dark blue, with little white buttons up the front. It was much too long for Zatanna. She wore it with no elegance, and did not aspire to.

"You're a life saver," she informed him, attempting to give him a playful punch in the arm. It landed far nearer to his elbow than was traditional for that sort of thing. "Geeze, you got tall. When did that happen? Did it hurt?"

"Last summer. Yes. Are you okay."

She made a noisy pfft sound, waving a dismissive hand. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Better than fine."

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, she's—" Zatanna paused, frowned. Then she bent to look under the table. There were more whispers. Zatanna straightened. "She wants you to turn around and cover your eyes so she can leave."

He'd brought extra clothes. It wasn't modesty. She didn't want him to know who she was. He turned, and made an unnecessary display of putting his hand over his eyes. He could hear the girl underneath the table crawl out and make her escape.

"Okay, you're good," Zatanna said.

Bruce lowered his hand and turned. "You slept with Skyler James." The mayor's daughter. He'd only met her a few times.

"Bruce!" Zatanna put her fists on her hips. Maybe she thought this was intimidating. "Did you peek?"

"No," he said. "It was pretty obvious." She narrowed her eyes at him. "The list of people I'd recognize that have reason to worry about me recognizing them is fairly short. She has the most to lose. She's blonde. You have a type."

"None of that is obvious! Except to you." She reached under the table to retrieve Bruce's bag.

"Why did you call me, then?" He didn't think they were close. Not really.

"The list of people who would answer the phone in the middle of the night and drop everything to break into a school library and bring me clothes without asking questions isn't even a list." She offered him his bag back, and he took it. "And I know you're not going to tell anyone about her."

"Yeah." He pulled his bag back onto his shoulder. "Her dad's an asshole."

"No kidding."

Bruce surveyed the damage done to the library. "What did you do."

"A lady doesn't kiss and tell."

"Not what I meant."

"It was a very advanced technique," Zatanna said, "and I'm not at liberty to discuss it."

"You tried to do something complicated instead of just getting naked like a normal person, and you accidentally blew up both your clothes."

"You can't prove it."

"I don't need to. You're you."

"You said you wouldn't tell," she reminded him. She had her fists on her hips again. It still wasn't intimidating.

"I said I wouldn't out Skyler," he corrected. "I never said I wouldn't tell anyone you destroyed a set of presidential biographies with an involuntary pants explosion."

"Oh, don't act all high and mighty like you've never done it."

"My collateral damage generally involves less William Howard Taft."

"Less," Zatanna repeated, raising an intrigued eyebrow, "but not none."

"None that I know of."

"How would you not know?"

"I try to be aware of my own limitations. Is that a paper hat." He pointed to a charred page that had been folded.

"It's actually half of a paper bra."

"Ah." It made sense. To an extent. Her clothes had blown up. She'd needed to use the library phone. She hadn't wanted to walk around naked. She'd abandoned it pretty far from the table. "You had sex anyway."

Zatanna's shrug was a full-body experience that involved both hands, a tilt of her hips, and her entire face. "Guil-ty," she confessed. "It's not like there was anything else to do. Hey, speaking of bad sex ideas, how's your girlfriend?"

"She moved."

"Aww."

"And she wasn't my girlfriend."

"Pffffffffffffft."

"Was that sound voluntary."

"Mostly." She pushed at his elbow so he'd turn, then jumped up onto his back uninvited. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and her arms around his shoulders, and pointed. He headed in the indicated direction rather than object. "Was she not your girlfriend like I'm not your friend?"

"I don't know."

"That means yes," Zatanna informed him. "How've you been, anyway?"

"Fine."

"How's Alfred?"

"I don't know."

"Eesh. That means bad." He had nothing to say to that. She'd started steering him by strategically squeezing his shoulders. "How's chess club? Lost yet?"

"No."

"Still making devils' advocates cry?"

"They only let me debate against other teams now."

"That's not a no." They were out in the night air; he headed for the dorms. "Made any friends?"

"No."

"Made any acquaintances who you hang out with all the time and do stuff for?"

"I guess."

"That's great! Good job!" She was being entirely sincere. She rested her elbows on his shoulders so that she could use both hands to ruffle his hair.

"I'm not a toddler."

"You're a great big baby."

"I'll drop you."

"You're not holding me." She pointed at a window. He started to climb the brickwork toward it. He didn't have to. But it was satisfying. "So are you one of the popular kids, or a jock, or one of the nerds?"

"That's not a real thing."

"I've seen movies, I know how public schools work. Do you shove people in lockers?"

"We don't have lockers."

"What! But what are you supposed to shove people into?"

"You're not supposed to shove people into things."

"Realistically, though…"

"Trash cans." He stopped at her windowsill, and she climbed up his back like a wayward lemur to open the window and slip inside. After a moment, she poked her head back out.

"Hey. I'm sorry about your mom."

"Thanks."

"Not the dead stuff," she clarified. "The stuff before that."

"It's fine."

"I was little."

"I know."

"We should hang out more."

"If you want." His arms were starting to ache. "Can it be on the ground, with clothes on, and no explosions."

Her answer was a wink and two fingerguns. It was not an answer.

Chapter Text

Julie rammed her shoulder into Janet's in some bizarre form of greeting. "Doing anything fun for Christmas?" Julie asked.

"Does Florida count as fun?" Janet asked in response, watching her feet as they took the stairs to the front of the school. Other students had already flattened out the snow, and sometimes it became packed enough that boots couldn't get a grip on it.

"Ew, god no." Julie tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Want me to get you sunscreen for Christmas?"

"... that would be great, actually." Considering how pale she was, Julie almost certainly had the hookup on good products. "Do you want anything?"

"I don't know, a cool necklace or something?" Julie shrugged. "You don't have to get me anything." She spotted Bruce by a lamppost before Janet could protest. "Bruce! What do you want for Christmas!"

Bruce looked up from his book with a frown. It was one of his little frowns, the kind that was difficult to identify for people who didn't know him. His expressions seemed to vary in size situationally, depending on where he was and who he was with. That was the thing that took longest to get used to, how it had no relationship whatsoever to the intensity of what he was feeling.

"No," he said, which was not actually an answer. The word clouded around his face.

"You do Christmas, right?" Julie prodded.

"Yeah."

"Do you have a big party, or what?"

"We hand out gifts at charitable events and volunteer at a soup kitchen."

"Oh." The answer took the wind out of Julie's sails. "That's... cool...?"

"It's nice," Bruce said, maybe sensing their assumptions.

"What's nice?" Ethan asked, Zach by his side.

"Being Santa," Janet answered before Bruce could. "He won't tell us what he wants for Christmas."

"Probably something money can't buy," said Zach. "Like parents."

Bruce snorted, immediate and surprised, a brief and ugly sound cut off as soon as it started. Zach looked victorious.

"Your birthday is in February, right?" Karen asked, smoothly inserting herself into the conversation. "I don't know what to get you for that, either."

"I don't need anything."

"Obviously," Rachel said. "That doesn't mean you don't want anything."

"If I wanted something, I'd buy it."

"Not if you didn't know it existed," Annie said. "What are some things you like?"

"Pretend you're making a bulleted list," Janet said with a grin. "I know you like those."

"Can that be the first thing on the list?" Bruce asked.

"I'm not getting you a bulleted list for Christmas," Julie said. "Physical, tangible things that you like. Like how I'm into lighthouses."

"You're into lighthouses?" Annie asked.

"You can get me pretty much anything with a lighthouse on it and I'll love it," she confirmed.

"I like lacquered boxes from Korea's Joseon dynasty," Bruce offered. "And anything from Japan's Edo period."

"Less pretentious," Ethan suggested.

"I don't think Mom's letting me give you any family heirlooms," Annie agreed.

"Calligraphy?" Bruce said uncertainly. "Abstract photography. Pine bonsai. Xiang Xiu embroidery."

"You're getting too fancy again," Zach said.

"Sheet music for the violin. Hand-carved wooden spoons. Endangered birds. Frogs."

"Frogs?" Rachel repeated.

"Yes."

"Like fancy frogs, or just boring frogs?"

"There's no such thing as a boring frog."

"What about frogs, now?" Tasha asked. She and Stacey always took the longest on Fridays, because they both had P.E. last period.

"We're trying to figure out what to get Bruce for Christmas," Julie explained.

"And his birthday," Karen added.

"He likes a lot of dumb fancy shit," Zach said.

"Are we surprised?" asked Tasha.

"I don't need anything," Bruce said again.

"My ride's here," Annie said, patting him on the shoulder. "I'll bring your present after break."

"Don't get me a present."

"See you next year," Stacey said, managing to sound almost normal as she followed Annie.

"Can I hide in your mansion until my family leaves me behind?" Janet asked.

"No. But if you actually need something over break, you can call me."

"Sorry, Macauley," Ethan teased.

"Yeah, yeah."

Bruce answered his phone despite not recognizing the number. His cell phone was meant for emergencies only, which usually meant Alfred wondering where he was.

"Bruce Wayne," he said instead of any real greeting, in case they were unsure who they'd called.

"Oh, thank god, I remembered your number."

He frowned. "Janet?"

"I need help."

Janet often needed help. She didn't like to ask for it. For her to ask meant it was urgent.

"What's wrong?"

"I need bail," she said.

Bail. Arrested. Shoplifting? She thought he didn't know about the shoplifting. She didn't like it when he paid for her. He did it in secret when they were out together, adding up the cost of everything that found its way into her pockets. She was very good at it. Hard to imagine she'd been caught. Never went anywhere expensive alone. Not enough to be worth an arrest. He'd been trying to teach her self defense. Assault charge? Not enough information.

"What happened?"

"I stole a cop."

"What."

"It's a long story, okay?" she said, her voice strained. "Can you hurry, please?"

Teenage girl. Gotham police. Bad combination. How long had she been in custody already? Probably no lawyer. Did she know not to talk to cops? Would they have listened if she asked for a lawyer? Gave her a phone call. Probably assumed she'd call her parents. Janet looked like she didn't get along with her parents. Easy mark. Bad to worse.

"Okay."

He hung up, and dialed the number for the department while he went to find Alfred.

"What just happened?" Janet asked, her arms full of her things as she left the station beside Bruce. The night hit her with cold all at once, her jacket in her arms instead of on them. From what she could tell, she wasn't being charged with anything. They weren't even going to be keeping any record of her arrest. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Was there anything Bruce couldn't turn into a misunderstanding?

"They fucked up," Bruce said as a summation. It was always a little funny when he swore. All clean-cut and uptight and carefully enunciating his vulgarity.

"Will you be needing anything else, Mr. Wayne?" asked the lawyer Bruce had brought along. The man had salt-and-pepper hair and reminded Janet of a vampire. His breath didn't cloud into steam when he spoke. She wondered how much it had cost just to have him show up.

"That will be all, Mr. Phillips. Thank you."

"Always a delight." Phillips tipped his head toward Janet. "Miss MacIntyre." Then he smiled at Alfred. "Mr. Pennyworth."

"Phillips," Alfred said coolly. Phillips strolled off toward his car, less expensive but more showy than Bruce's.

"I don't understand what just happened," she said, beginning to shiver.

"They like easy marks," Bruce said. "Phillips would tear them apart. Put your coat on."

"But…" Janet swallowed. "But I did it," she said.

"It was his own fault for not doing his job. The last thing they need is more bad press, he should have known better." Bruce took her jacket out of her arms, and she let him. "Do your parents know where you are?"

"No. They're out with Ashley."

Bruce held up her coat until she put her arms through it, and tucked it over her shoulders. "You're okay?"

"Yeah."

"No one touched you?"

"No."

"Have you eaten?"

"It's fine."

"Where do you want to eat?"

Janet sighed. This was one of those things Bruce would be stubborn about, but it felt weird asking his butler to drive their very fancy car through a drive-thru. Although. "McDonald's," she decided, "but only if you eat a chicken nugget."

A twitch of his nose and the corner of his mouth were Bruce's only concessions to displeasure. He was practically making a face. "Fine. We'll get you something to eat and take you home."

"You're too nice," she warned him. She dug into her pocket, suddenly, fishing out her wallet.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said. "I mean, not nothing, but. I got you something."

"What?"

"In Florida. I was going give them to you when school started, but they're in my wallet anyway, so, like..." She trailed off, holding out her hand until he offered his palm. She dropped them into his hand. "There was a smashed penny machine that had a frog and a parrot in it and I thought of you? They're not real presents or anything."

He slid the flattened metal along his fingers to see them. There were four, one of each design the machine had offered. A stylized tree frog of no particular species, an alligator that could as easily be a crocodile, a macaw that wasn't actually native to Florida, and a bat.

"Thank you," he said, running his thumb over the bat. "You didn't have to do that."

He'd bought her a used car for Christmas. He hadn't put his name on it, but it was obvious who it was from. It was still nicer than her old car, but it hurt her pride less than a new one would have. "Sorry I couldn't get you anything actually cool."

"Don't be." He tucked them into his pocket. "Just call me before stealing any cop cars, next time. Cops actually have to listen to me."

"I bet they love you."

"No," he said flatly. "They don't." Alfred held the door open for her. "Like I said: they have to listen to me."

Chapter Text

"Bruce?"

Bruce froze on the sidewalk. Rachel stared, dressed in sweatpants and sandals she'd put on to take the trash out.

"Bruce, what are you doing here?" Rachel lived in what could euphemistically be termed 'a bad neighborhood'. She knew he hadn't been stopping by to see her. Despite how long they'd been acquainted, they weren't that close. For another, he'd been walking right past the place, unaware she lived there.

"Just going for a walk," he said, but already Rachel had come down the steps to see him better.

"You should not be here," she said, because he was still dressed like a prep school valedictorian, the stink of money all over him. Streetlights glinted off his watch. There was blood on the silver band. "Bruce? Did you get mugged?"

"I'm fine," he said, and again he moved to leave. She grabbed his hand, realized his knuckles were raw and bleeding. Just as quickly he yanked his hand away. "Don't." He swallowed, hard enough that she could hear it over the distant din of the city at night. "Don't touch me, I don't... like being touched."

Bruce was never friendly. But he'd also never had a problem being touched. Not happy about it, but he allowed it. The way he was about everything. There were things he did, habits he had, but in general Bruce did not have real preferences like other people. Not since his parents had died.

She remembered when he'd been little, when her mom had brought her along to work, when he'd been weird but harmless and he'd known how to smile. They used to talk about books, mostly. They'd never seen each other often.

Now he was standing in the snow and the dark with a split lip and bloody nose and ruined shirt.

"Bruce, come inside so you can get cleaned up," she said. He stood in silence. She hadn't intended to be outside for longer than a minute or two, and the cold was seeping into her skin, snow melting in her sandals. "My mom's going to be at work for another couple of hours, it's just us. You don't want Alfred to see you like this."

His butler's name made his shoulders slump. It was a cheap trick, but she wasn't wrong. There really was love there, she thought. She didn't try to take his hand again when she lead him inside.

"What happened to you?" she asked, but he said nothing. "You can use the shower, and we have a first aid kit, but if it's anything serious you should see a doctor."

It was impossible to tell if it was serious. There was no chance that he'd admit it if it was.

"I'll see if I can find you some clothes to wear home," she said. "Pants might be... tricky."

"It's fine," he said, which sounded much more his usual self.

"I don't think going home without pants would be fine."

She dug through clothes while he was in the bathroom. She thought she had a shirt that would fit him, one of the ones she wore to bed. Pants really were a problem, though. No one in the house was as big as Bruce; even if they'd kept any of her father's things, they wouldn't have been tall enough.

When she came out of her room, Bruce was standing in her living room in nothing but a towel. She rolled her eyes. "Don't just wander around people's houses naked!"

"I'm not." He looked like the idea of self-consciousness had never even occurred to him.

She handed him the shirt, and he pulled it on without looking at it. It was old and gray with a bootleg cartoon character on the front. It was much too big for her, and only barely fit him. It was the first time she'd seen him in something resembling casual.

The towel around his waist was less casual.

"The only thing I could find that might fit you was this skirt," she said, gesturing with it in her hand. It was denim with an elastic waist. The only thing it had going for it was that the lack of legs made it more likely to fit.

"Sure," he said as he took it, no apparent problem with it. He hesitated, and she turned around. Partially because she didn't trust him to not get naked in front of her. He wasn't all there, was even less there than he usually was. Apparently his earlier revulsion at being touched had used up the whole of his limited emotional budget.

She didn't think that was actually how it worked. She didn't know how it actually worked.

"What should I do with your clothes?" she asked him.

"Just toss them."

She frowned as she turned around. Her skirt looked shorter on him than it did on her. She didn't think he'd be wearing the outfit out any time soon, but he could get away with it if he wanted to.

"You're going home like that?"

"Yeah." His lip was still swollen, a scab along one eyebrow. His hands were a mess. She sighed, heading for the kitchen to grab him an ice pack.

"What were you even doing out here?" she asked. "It's the middle of the night and you're walking around like..." She grasped for words, but he just shrugged. "Did someone try to jump you?" she asked.

"I took care of it."

"You mean you beat the shit out of them." She didn't hide her disdain. It was no secret that she wasn't a fan of Bruce's violent tendencies, even if she sometimes found them justified.

She froze as a thought occurred to her.

"You did it on purpose," she said. He didn't respond. "You came here, dressed like that... to pick a fight?"

She wanted him to deny it. It would be so easy. The accusation was absurd. Bruce Wayne, of all people, deliberately seeking out violent robbery.

Bruce didn't deny it. Rachel felt overwhelmed suddenly with a kind of cold fury, a righteous indignation at and for him. It struck her speechless, an intense rage that she didn't know what to do with. So she pulled off her sandal and threw it at him. He put up his arms in time to avoid getting hit in the forehead with it.

"Did you just throw a shoe at me?" he asked, incredulous.

She answered by coming closer so that she could smack him in the shoulder with her other sandal. He turned half away from her, shielding his head with his arms. "What is wrong with you?" she demanded.

"Why are you hitting me with a shoe?" Bruce asked, bafflement making him sound more like a teenage boy and less like a larval CEO.

"Because you're a jackass!" she said, and she stopped hitting him long enough to press an ice pack to his face. He flinched, but then held it against his eye. Then she hit him again. "Where are they?"

"Who?"

She smacked him again. Every time she did it he flinched, even though she wasn't hitting him that hard and she'd seen him take a punch like nothing. "The guys you beat the shit out of," she said.

"They're—I don't know where they are." He looked petulant, ice against his face and his shoulders curled in like that would make him smaller.

"Were they still moving?" she demanded.

"Yeah, they ran away."

She gave him another smack for sounding annoyed. "You're lucky you didn't give anyone brain damage."

"Why are you—they mugged me," he protested indignantly. She threatened him with a shoe so he'd recoil, but didn't hit him again.

"They are my neighbors and you came here with a watch worth more than our rent because you wanted an excuse to hit someone."

"Your neighbors are scumbags."

She dropped her sandal and punched him in the shoulder. It hurt her knuckles. "They're poor."

"So are you. I don't see you jumping people in alleys."

"What if it had been Zach?" she countered. Bruce hesitated. "What if it was Zach and his brother's shitty friends, and they saw some asshole walking around like he owned the fucking place? Would he have a concussion right now?" Bruce said nothing, and that was somehow more infuriating than if he'd tried to defend himself. "I can't even believe you," she said. "You know, I actually thought it was kind of cool what you did for Janet? Like, I actually thought you had done this cool thing for her. But apparently you were just looking for an excuse to beat the shit out of someone—"

"It wasn't like that."

"Why would I believe you?" she asked, but he had no answer. "There's no way those guys can afford to go to the hospital, did you think of that?"

"No."

"What?"

"I wasn't thinking."

"No shit." She gestured for him to show her his hands. He did so; she didn't think there was anything she could really do for his scabbing-over knuckles. Wrap them in gauze, maybe, but she wasn't sure he'd let her. "I'm sorry I hit you."

"It's okay."

"It's not. I lost my temper and I shouldn't have."

"I deserved it."

She didn't contradict him. "Do you want me to drive you home?"

"I can walk." Which would be one hell of a sight, Bruce Wayne walking all through Gotham in a too-tight shirt and a short skirt.

"I'll drive you home." He was passive again, and something about it struck her as pathetic. "Bruce?" she said, and he met her eyes with his good one. "Don't do this again." There was no 'or else', because what would she threaten him with? He was big and strong and rich and orphaned. There weren't threats for boys like that.

"I won't," he said. She didn't have any reason to believe him. She chose to, because she didn't know what the alternative was.

Chapter Text

Bruce pulled the pile of grey yarn out of the gift bag with a solemnity it didn't ask for. Technically speaking, it was a sweater, but the title was more aspirational than earned. It was lumpy in some places and had holes from dropped stitches in others, with the sleeves different lengths and attached at different heights.

"I knit it myself," Kimber explained.

Bruce pulled it over his head and on top of the shirt he was already wearing. Despite his size, it still managed to be too big for him. The end of one sleeve dangled from the middle of his forearm, while the other covered his hand entirely. The collar was large enough to nearly fall from his shoulder.

"Nana said I should probably start with something small and easy," Kimber added, "but I figured, go big or go home, right?"

Bruce looked down at himself, contemplating his sleeves. "I love it."

"Oh, good," she said, relieved.

"Can she teach me how to knit."

She blinked. "My nana?" she asked for confirmation, and he nodded. "Probably? I think she'd be happy to have more people to talk to."

"Cool." Bruce carefully folded the plasticky gift bag, and set it aside onto the pile of neatly stacked gift wrap. He hadn't torn a single gift open, instead opting to carefully peel open the tape and fold the paper.

"Why do you want to learn how to knit?" Zach asked. He'd gifted Bruce a questionable nu-metal CD that Bruce had politely pretended he would listen to.

"It's so if he ever gets stranded on a desert island, he can knit himself a tent using two sticks and a coconut," Tasha said.

"How would he get stranded on a desert island?" Ethan asked.

"He probably owns at least three," Rachel said.

"Probably," Bruce said.

"Don't strand yourself on a desert island just to prove a point," Rachel warned. Bruce scoffed like she was joking, but did not actually agree not to.

"My turn!" Annie announced. "This is going to be the best present, sorry guys." She handed Bruce her gift box with a flourish, and he accepted cautiously.

"I recognize that wrapping paper," Tasha said. "That's from the gift shop at the museum."

"Oh, god, it is going to be the best present," Janet said, disgusted, and Annie laughed. Everyone sitting close enough started leaning closer to get a better look as he opened the box.

It was a woodblock print of a frog by Matsumoto Hoji. Its mouth was a mopey letter C almost as big as its body, emphasized by black eyes staring into the middle distance.

"Oh my god," Kimber said, pointing at the frog and it's downturned mouth. "It's Bruce."

Stacey clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a hiccup of laughter. She was the only one who bothered.

"It is!" Zatanna agreed, delighted.

"It totally is," Janet said.

"I remember you saying you were into the Edo period," Annie said, "so I saw that frog and I was like, it's fate. Bruce needs this frog."

Almost everyone else in the sitting room was still laughing. Bruce gently lifted the print out of the box. "It's perfect."

"I knew it."

"I need a picture," Kimber said immediately, holding up the clunky disposable camera she'd brought with her. "Hold it up," she said, the camera to her eye. Bruce accommodated, holding the print up next to his face to better capture the resemblance. Zach fell into cackles on the floor as Kimber pressed the shutter, the flash going off in Bruce's face.

"Take, like, three," Julie insisted. "In case the first one doesn't turn out." Kimber complied, trying slightly different angles each time to account for lighting issues.

"Is this everything?" Bruce asked as he returned the print to its box for safekeeping.

"I've still got something," Zatanna said, waving a hand. She hadn't known anyone but Bruce at his birthday party, but she'd already befriended everyone she'd met. Whether this was in spite or because of the tuxedo she'd inexplicably worn was unclear. "Ta-da!" she said, producing with both hands what was clearly a paper bag from the nearby gas station. Bruce looked at the bag. Bruce looked at Zatanna. "It's not from the gas station," she added.

It actually wasn't from the gas station. Bruce pulled from the brown paper bag a box, approximately the size of a tissue box, metal coated in enamel. It was decorated with the gotham skyline along the sides, all in shades of black and silver and pearl; small gemstones made stars along the top. There was an oval lid there, and its presence alerted Bruce to the small drawer in the front containing the key. Bruce flipped the box over to regard the keyhole.

"What's going to happen if I wind this." No one else at the party was aware of the risks that could accompany Zatanna's gifts.

"It'll be wound," she said with a shrug. "For now, anyway."

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. Nonetheless, he stuck the key in and began to wind it, if only briefly. He flipped the box back upright, and pressed a small switch shaped like the moon.

The oval lid popped open. The inside of the lid was painted to look like the forest, all lush and green. A miniaturized bird had popped up with it, larger than was standard for a singing bird box but still small. Instead of being decorated with iridescent hummingbird feathers, the tiny feathers were black and white with a bright red crest on the head; instead of the delicate song these devices usually played, it played a honking sort of bird call. The overall effect was clownish, not at all the dainty beauty associated with such devices.

The oval lid slammed shut, and Bruce stared at it.

"It's very nice," Stacey timidly assured Zatanna, sure of no such thing.

"Zee," Bruce said, "what did you do?"

She grinned. "I'll tell you later."

Bruce gently set the box down on the end table, with care suggesting that it might be explosive. "So that's everything."

"You're free from the tyranny of presents," Janet said.

"Hey," Zatanna asked, "so when do you guys have prom?"

"Prom's in May," Julie said. "Why?"

"Are you going?" Zatanna asked Bruce, trying to prod him with her toe but unable to reach. "You have to go, right?"

"Sophomores can't go unless they're dating a senior or a junior," Julie said. "He has to wait until next year."

Zatanna looked at Bruce. "Did you not tell them?" Bruce shrugged.

"He didn't," Janet said. "What should he have told us?"

Bruce tried to figure out which set of eyes he was supposed to be meeting before giving up and looking at a spot on the far wall. "Now that I'm sixteen I can take the HiSET. Once I pass I'll be going to Yale. This is going to be my last year." He shrugged.

"Take the what now?" Zach said.

"He's testing out of high school," Janet said, because even if she'd never heard the name she was capable of understanding context clues.

"You can do that?" Zach asked.

"He can," Ethan said.

"So you're going to be gone by the time we can go to prom?" Annie asked.

"That sucks," Zatanna said, lounging aggressively backward on the couch. "What's the point of going to normal school if you're not going to go to normal prom?"

"I could take you," Stacey said in a small voice. "If you came as my date."

"Oh, that sucks though," Kimber said, and Stacey shrank in on herself. "Then the rest of us don't get to see Bruce try to prom."

"Getting as many people as possible to see Bruce try to prom is vital," Zatanna said, ignoring that she would not be going to Gotham High's prom.

"What if we just match everyone up?" Julie suggested. "Like, Janet could take Annie, or whatever."

"Will they let you be gay at prom, though?" Ethan asked.

"They will if you invite Bruce," Julie said to Ethan. "They're not going to tell the rich kid he can't go to prom with a Black guy. That's like a scandal double-whammy. And right before he's about to leave anyway? That's the last thing they need. Then once they have to let Bruce in, all the other sophomores in our group can get in just fine."

"My house has a ballroom," Bruce pointed out. "I own a yacht. I can just throw a party that isn't at school. You know that, right."

"That's not the same," Zatanna says. "Then the normal kids aren't there, spiking the punchbowls and having fistfights over some girl named Jessica."

"You have weird ideas about what public school is like," Janet said.

"No, she's right," Julie said, standing up so that she could pace. She'd convinced Bruce to let them all drink sparkling apple cider out of crystal champagne flutes as part of the festivities, and she refused to put hers down. "If we're not going to show off, what's the point?"

"Having a party with Bruce before he leaves?" Janet asked.

"Yeah, but he's coming back. Right?" she asked Bruce.

"I live here," Bruce said.

"Right," Julie said. "Exactly. So this is his last chance before college to make a big impression before disappearing and giving his mystique some time to blossom."

"What," Bruce said.

"But," Julie continued, an imperious tilt to her nose, "throwing his own party might actually be better, if it's just, like. Open. Like, a competing prom. So the Gotham High kids and the Gotham Academy kids including the freshman and the sophomores. And it'll be like, oh, you went to the official prom? Like at a school? I went to the Bruce Wayne yacht party. People will be talking about it for years. If you make it free and don't have a dress code then it's more egalitarian, even."

"Oh!" Zatanna said. "Then I can go!"

"Don't just decide for him," Rachel interjected. "That's a huge thing to have to organize in three months."

"Not to mention expensive," Janet said.

"I would have to ask Alfred," Bruce said. "He used to do that stuff all the time. He probably could."

"Do what, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked, taking a single step into the sitting room. The teens quieted in the presence of an authority figure.

"I'm not going to be in high school for prom," Bruce explained, conveniently leaving out the potential date-matrix workaround. "We were thinking about throwing a party for all the high-schoolers. At prom time. On a yacht."

"All the high-schoolers?" Alfred said after a moment.

"Yeah," Bruce said. "An egalitarian prom. Without an entry fee or a dress code." He looked at Julie. "Right?"

"Right," Julie said, less self-assured in the face of an adult who presumably knew what he was doing. "We thought it would be a nice send-off, and then we can all go together. And if it's open to all high-schoolers, then that'd be, you know. Cool. And not elitist, or whatever."

Alfred considered the neat stack of gift wrap. "I'll see about making a few calls," he said finally.

Zatanna squealed with delight. "I'm going to normal prom!" she declared, leaping from her couch and onto Bruce.

"This is going to be so cool," Kimber agreed, leaning down to hug Bruce from the other side.

"This is awesome," Zach said, bumping Bruce's limp fist rather than allowing Bruce to leave him hanging.

"Hey, Mr. Pennyworth," Kimber asked, waving her disposable camera. "When I get these developed, do you want copies?"

"That would be lovely, Miss Sanders."

"Sorry about the. Prom. Thing."

Alfred was still cleaning up the kitchen, finding space in the fridge for all the food sent along by everyone's parents. Bruce had wanted everyone to take their leftovers back, but they'd refused. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with that much macaroni, or that many tamales. How long could leftovers get left?

"Do you actually want to go through with it?" Alfred asked. "You can always tell them I decided to put my foot down as your, ah. Butler."

It felt stupid to still be doing this, the master of the house and the butler. But he didn't know if Alfred knew how to be anything else. He didn't want to break anything by asking.

"I want to," Bruce said. "I should do something nice for them. If it's not too much trouble."

"Considering our prior annual party budget, I imagine we've accumulated enough in savings to accommodate every high-schooler in the state."

"Yeah," Bruce said, now considering if this could be a mistake. A party. A great big party, organized by Alfred the way he helped organize so many other parties.

He looked at a spot on the counters and thought very pointedly about girls crawling all over him in the sitting room. Kimber smelled nice.

"I'm glad," Alfred said suddenly. "I know you're going off to college, but I'm glad of... all this. Your friends."

"Yeah," Bruce said again. He didn't know if he would define them as friends. In a purely pedantic sense. The word felt like it ought to be more meaningful than this. They were here sometimes, and that was fine. He would go to college soon, and that would be fine. He might see them again, or he might not. It would be fine, either way. Friendship, he thought, ought to be more than fine. Calling this friendship felt like a disservice. Or maybe it would be fair to say that they were his friends, but he was not their friend. It was complicated.

"I'm very proud of you, Bruce," Alfred said. "You know that, right?"

"I know," Bruce said. "I'm proud of you, too." That may have been a mistake. He was supposed to pretend Alfred knew what he was doing. That he wasn't lost and alone just the same.

Abruptly, Alfred turned and wrapped his arms around Bruce. It was far from his first hug of the day. Briefly, Bruce thought it might be fine.

But it wasn't fine. He could feel it happening, the way it always happened when it mattered. He wasn't always haunted, but sometimes he was, sometimes he could feel the ghosts inside him clawing at his throat and filling up his lungs and pressing at the backs of his eyes. Not always, but sometimes, some people and some places were like magnets pulling at all the dark things under his skin. He couldn't let them out, he knew if he let them out they would never stop, he would never stop, he was a graveyard and if he even breathed then all the dead would come unburied and he couldn't breathe—

He pushed Alfred away. "Sorry," Bruce said, trying to breathe the way a person should breathe.

Alfred rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Apologies," he said. "I should have known better than to... I know you don't like it. When I. Do that sort of thing."

It wasn't fair. Bruce knew it wasn't fair. He'd spent all day looking almost halfway to normal. Almost a person. "Sorry," Bruce said. He didn't know how to explain it in a way that would make it okay. It wasn't okay. It was never going to be okay. But Alfred would want it to be okay. Want him to get better.

Bruce had decided four years ago that he was never going to be better.

Alfred looked very tired. He leaned, half-sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island. "You have nothing to apologize for, Master Bruce," he said. "I'm just glad you had a happy birthday. That's all."

"I love you," Bruce said, willing him to understand the explanation, understand how it was different.

"I love you, too," Alfred sighed, taking it as another apology.

"Is this going to explode."

"Not everything I make explodes," Zatanna huffed. She was wearing another tuxedo, but with a down coat. Bruce was wearing silk pajamas and rubber boots. They were both standing in the snow close to the woods behind the mansion. He was holding the singing bird box she'd given him.

"That's not an answer." His breath fogged in the air.

"How it works is," she said, "every year, on your birthday, you have to wind it. And you have to think happy thoughts while you wind it. Real ones. If it's not good enough to make Peter Pan fly, it won't work. None of that bittersweet stuff."

"Peter didn't actually need to think happy thoughts," Bruce said.

"Shut up," Zatanna said. "You do have to think happy thoughts. If you do, then you hit the button at midnight. It doesn't have to be exactly midnight. You have sixty seconds."

"Thanks for the wiggle room."

"Shut up. If you do all that right, then it'll work. Definitely. It will definitely work."

Bruce put his hand on the key, and tried to think of a happy thought that wasn't sex-related. He was sixteen. He gave up.

At some point he was going to have to stop using his dick as a quick-release dopamine button when he needed to pretend to be functional. He probably wouldn't get to spend that much time in the shower at Yale.

He turned the key, and thought about girls, and smashed pennies, and sad frogs, and a very fat cat he'd seen trotting through the yard recently.

"Is it midnight."

"I'll tell you when it's midnight!" Zatanna said, stomping one foot. "Okay, it's midnight."

Bruce pressed the button. The lid popped open. The little model of a bird remained where it was. The little model of a bird also, simultaneously, unfurled its wings and took flight. It grew larger in the air, reached its final size as it landed on the trunk of a nearby tree.

"Campephilus principalis," he said.

"What?"

"Ivory-billed woodpecker."

"You memorized the fancy science name?" Zatanna asked, incredulous.

"I used to get gold stars for it."

"Weird."

"You know this isn't its natural habitat, right?" he asked. "They live in Florida. It's way too cold here."

"It's got a week to migrate," she shrugged. "After that it's a regular bird. I mean it's the same kind of bird, but right now it's a hypothetical bird. It's complicated, don't worry about it."

He turned the box over in his hands, looking it over. If he did this once a year for long enough, it might not be enough for a breeding population. But it would be something.

"Did you give me this as a way to keep me from killing myself."

Zatanna scoffed, swinging her limp arm to hit him with it. "What? No. What? That's stupid. Don't be stupid. Shut up. What?"

Chapter Text

The bell above the door to Rex's Reptiles chimed.

"Hey!" Rex greeted, pleasantly surprised. "Little dude!" He frowned as he took in the shoebox. "Whatcha got there?"

"Bruce?" Rachel said, surprised. Bruce stopped in his tracks, looking from Rachel to Karen. Recalibrating, or something like it, to account for the unexpected presence of people he recognized and might need to interact with.

"I have a ball python," Karen said, an explanation he wouldn't have asked for.

"You all know each other?" Rex asked.

"We go to school together," Bruce explained, resuming his walk toward the counter. He set the box on the counter, and Rex squinted at it suspiciously.

"You know I'm not a vet, little dude," Rex sighed.

"And I'm not little," Bruce said.

"You're not the big guy," Rex pointed out.

"Yeah," Bruce said. "I guess that's. Fair." He shifted uncomfortably. "The vet doesn't do exotics," he said.

"I don't do mammals," Rex countered.

"What is it?" Rachel asked, inching closer alongside Karen.

"One of the cats caught a bat," Bruce said. "Or it found it already hurt. It has a bad wing. I used gloves, I put it in a coffee can in the box to limit exposure."

"The bats in this city are crazy," Karen said. "Every year we find a bat in our kitchen cupboard where we keep the big stock pot. Dad swears it's the same bat every time."

"I thought you might know someone," Bruce said to Rex. "Wildlife rehab. I know sometimes people bring you snakes."

"That they do," Rex said, his gaze distant. He snapped back to the room. "I don't know," he said, rubbing his chin. "I guess I can make some calls, sure. I'll be right back, don't steal anything. Nobody touch that." He ducked into his office.

"Do you have your shots?" Karen teased.

"Yes," Bruce said. "I'll be getting a booster later."

"Where's Alfred?" Rachel asked.

"Hm?"

"Alfred," she repeated. "Shouldn't this be his thing? He seems like he'd know the number for animal control or whatever."

"Oh." Bruce looked at the box again. "He gets weird about bats," he said. "I thought I'd try to take care of it. Save time."

Rachel wasn't sure she believed that explanation, but she supposed it didn't matter. This didn't feel like a big lie, felt more like one of those awkward little ones a person might tell to avoid explaining some minor family foible.

"You should buy me another snake," Karen said, tossing her hair and leaning against the counter.

"Do you have room for another snake."

"You should buy me an enclosure for another snake," Karen amended. "Then you should buy me another snake." She turned to bend forward against the counter instead, the better to show off the length of her legs and the arch of her back.

"That doesn't seem necessary," Bruce said.

Karen tossed her hair again and wiggled her hips.

"I probably have an extra enclosure I can give you," Bruce said.

"Don't reward her behavior," Rachel said to Bruce. "And don't reward his behavior," she said to Karen, who was still posing.

"Aww," Karen said, standing to tousle Rachel's hair with a pout of her lips. "She's mad because I'm a bad feminist," she teased, adjusting her cleavage.

"I am not," Rachel said, rolling her eyes. "I just don't think either of you should be setting a precedent for a transactional relationship."

"What do you think I'm going to be tran-sact-ing?" Karen asked, with a pointed shake of her shoulders.

"I don't mean like that, I just mean..." Rachel tried to find an inoffensive way to rephrase her offensive suggestion.

Bruce looked at them both. "Are you two not together."

"What?" Karen asked.

"I thought you two were..." Bruce trailed off with a vague gesture between the two of them. Karen barked a laugh as Rachel turned pink.

"We fight like a married couple," Karen teased Rachel, leaning closer to her. Rachel turned her head away with a scowl. "Rach would probably be one of those lesbians," Karen said, "who says she hates men but gets all pissy when I want them to eat me out."

"I would not," Rachel said, her voice rising several octaves, her face turning red. "People can like girls without wanting to fuck you, specifically."

"Hmm." Karen narrowed her eyes and grabbed her own breasts. "Can they, though?" she wondered, cocking her hip.

"God, you're the worst," Rachel said, refusing to look at her. Karen put her hands on her hips and stuck her tongue out at Rachel.

"I'm not clear on why you two are spending time together," Bruce said.

"Someone has to," Karen said with another toss of her hair. "If she stays home reading all day she's going to forget what the shadows signify, or whatever."

"You don't have to add qualifiers to make yourself sound dumber," Rachel said.

"Who, me?" Karen asked, twirling a strand of bleach-blonde hair around her finger with wide cow eyes. Bruce suspected she was being deliberately obnoxious for Rachel's benefit.

"Gross," Rachel said with a wrinkle of her nose. She caught Bruce's expression. "She offered to pay for lunch," she said to explain her presence.

"With my filthy patriarchy money," Karen said with a wiggle of her hips.

"The fashion shoots they have her doing are creepy," Rachel said to Bruce, as if he would understand or somehow intervene.

"Oh, totally," Karen agreed. "I'm getting that jailbait money while the getting's good." Rachel made a face again.

"I could help you get less creepy work," Bruce said. "If you want."

Karen pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I'm kind of coasting on the underage-girl-with-a-rack thing right now," she admitted, to Rachel's deep chagrin. "Britney Spears style. Creepy is hot right now. I figure I'll make as much money off pervs while I still can. Then when I'm done I stop bleaching my hair and get bangs or something. Totally different look. Or I'll keep the look but get into porn? I haven't decided yet."

"I don't want to know," Rex said, emerging from the back. "I got in touch with someone," he told Bruce. "He'll be coming to pick the bat up later. This is a one-time favor for me, though, so don't think you can keep bringing these here."

Bruce nodded. "Sorry," he said. "You can bill me for it. If you have to clean, or. Vaccinate."

"I'll put it on your tab," Rex said.

It wasn't until Karen had spent another half hour looking at snakes, Bruce long gone and no wildlife rehab in sight, that Rachel noticed the empty counter.

"How do you safely rehab a bat?" she wondered.

"Rachel," Karen said with a click of her tongue from the other side of the store. "Seriously?"

Rachel frowned. "What?"

"That bat went to a nice farm upstate," Karen said. "Right?"

Rex shrugged.

"What?" Rachel said, looking between the two of them. "You're not—you told Bruce—"

"I told the little guy the same thing I used to tell the big guy," Rex said, leaning on the counter. "I'm going to tell him we did everything we could and I'm only going to charge him the cost of putting it down."

"Animals die sometimes," Karen said, as if Rachel didn't already know.

"I know that," Rachel snapped. "So does he. You don't have to lie, that's not ethical."

"If you want to tell him the truth," Rex said, "you can go ahead and see how much he's willing to spend convincing a vet to perform heart surgery on a gecko."

"Is that a thing?" Karen asked.

"If you have enough money," Rex said, "you can find someone willing to pretend it's a thing."

Bruce stared at Rachel, standing awkwardly in the library where Alfred had left her to wait. Rachel stared at Bruce, standing awkwardly in the library where Alfred had brought him to greet his guest.

"Hey," Rachel said finally.

"Hey," Bruce said.

"I'm here for our playdate," Rachel said.

"I didn't think we did those anymore," Bruce said.

"We didn't," she said. "Now we do. Again."

When they were young, playdates were a way to pretend that bringing Rachel to work sometimes was a choice and not a necessity. Martha had always appreciated excuses to socialize her son, like he needed to acclimate to company to avoid biting strangers. It wasn't something either of them had ever done on their own initiative.

"I did the math," Rachel blurted. "Today's the day. From now on it's. Most of my life. That I haven't had a dad. After today. Is that weird?"

"No," Bruce said.

"Have you ever thought about that?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," she said. "I couldn't think of anyone else who would get it."

"Yeah."

The library had a special reading area for children's books, all the shelves low enough for small hands to reach. Everything was multicolored and bright, bean bags and foam curves, plush rugs in rainbows. It hadn't changed at all since they were children. There was a seashell on one shelf that Rachel remembered leaving there. She considered a bean bag, but decided on the floor instead, sitting before cautiously lying backward on the carpet. It felt like a cool, relaxed teen thing to do. It felt awkward. The ceiling was offputtingly high. She felt small.

Bruce also laid down on the rug, a demure distance away. He'd always been good at following someone else's lead.

"I'm not upset," Rachel said. "It's weird, is all."

"Yeah," Bruce said.

"Sorry I never said hi," she said. "At school."

"It's fine," he said. "We weren't really friends."

"I thought you thought we were friends," she admitted. "Like, I didn't know if you got that my mom was working. That it was Mom's job."

"I knew," he said.

"I didn't really want to be here."

"You weren't subtle," he said.

"Oh," she said. "I tried to be supportive of your book club thing."

"Yeah," he said. "I came up with that so our parents wouldn't get mad that we were reading and not talking to each other."

"No way."

"Like I said," he said, "you weren't subtle."

"Sorry." It hadn't occurred to her that he'd been trying to cover for her, already that aware of adult expectations. At the time it had been indistinguishable from being a weird rich kid. Still was. "You had a thing about princesses," she reminded him, wanting to justify her childhood rudeness.

"No I didn't," Bruce said.

"Uh, you extremely did."

"I had a thing about royalty," he conceded. "You mostly saw the princesses because I thought you'd like those better. And I didn't want anyone else touching my hardcover collection of Prince Valiant."

"Oh my god." Rachel found herself laughing, high-pitched and wheezing. "The—with the hair? Like in newspapers?"

"It worked better as a book." He did not bother trying to explain further. He'd only mentioned it because she already had more than enough mortifying information about his childhood. It wasn't as if this could make it worse.

Rachel suppressed further laughter. "God. That has such potential to be the fucking worst."

"What does."

"A royalty-obsessed billionaire."

"I wasn't—okay. Do you want to know the truth." Bruce rolled onto his side, propped up on one arm to look at her. "I've never told this to anyone. Alfred doesn't know this."

Considering what else Alfred didn't know, Rachel found this deeply concerning. "Okay," she said.

"Until I was eleven, I fundamentally misunderstood how royalty worked." Bruce settled back down, resting his hair against the floor. "When I was a kid, a bunch of tabloids tried to make this thing happen—I think they gave up after Princess Di—where they called the Waynes Gotham's Royal Family."

"Oh my god."

"For some reason I must have seen this as a four year old and internalized the idea that the King of a place was whoever happened to be richest. It felt very logical to me that in other countries they let the King run the government, but in ours it was a title that no one uses."

"Bruce."

"For years I thought it was—I thought it was a cool piece of trivia that I was technically a prince. That if I'd been born in Thule in the middle ages I'd have a singing sword."

"Thule?"

"It's what Prince Valiant was the prince of."

"You memorize the weirdest shit. You know that, right?"

"I'm aware."

"Did someone finally tell you? Did Alfred?"

"No. I told you, he doesn't know. There must have been something in the news about the actual royal family and I figured it out. Then I was embarrassed and I never told anyone. I think that was when I started reading nonfiction."

"Oh my god, Bruce. That's just. That's perfect? You were so traumatized about being wrong about something that even though no one knew you decided to never read anything untrue ever again."

"I don't think that's what happened."

"That's totally what happened."

"I read fiction, sometimes," he said.

"You probably read literature." She pronounced the word as pretentiously as she could manage. It reminded him of Karen.

"Sometimes," he said, noncommittal.

"I don't think I had any funny stories like that," she said. "I only had the normal stuff, like my parents lying to me about seatbelts."

"What."

"They told me that if you weren't wearing your seatbelt at the drive-thru, the people at McDonald's wouldn't give you your food."

"Why would that be how it worked."

"I don't know!" she said, exasperated. "A public safety campaign thing. It made sense at the time, until the first time I went to McDonald's with Karen and her parents and she wasn't wearing her seatbelt and I flipped." It felt like so long ago and not long enough, a child version of herself that should have been a different person but wasn't. She felt like an adult, but suspected adulthood would feel like a different life than her childhood had been. It still felt like most of her life. Having a father still felt like most of her life.

Bruce snorted.

"Don't laugh like you knew how McDonald's worked."

"I didn't," he agreed.

"Do you still not like being touched?" she asked.

"What?"

"You said that," she reminded him. "Before. That you didn't like being touched."

"Oh," he said. It was unclear to her if he had any memory of that. "It's fine."

Back to fine. Always fine.

"Can I try something?" Rachel asked.

"Sure."

"You have to not move."

"Okay."

Rachel sat up and scooted closer to him on the rug. Bruce politely remained unmoving, still looking at the ceiling. She hadn't told him not to look at her, but it turned out to be very helpful. She threw a leg over him to straddle his chest, and bent her head to kiss him. Her hair fell around his face. Straddling him was more effort for her legs than she'd expected, because he was bigger than she'd expected. Romance novels never mentioned the thigh workout. He had a clean boy smell that she associated more with dads than with other teenagers. She preferred this because other teenagers felt like children to her.

"Was that good?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. He did not look flustered or disheveled, which led her to believe that it was not actually that good.

"Karen keeps joking that we should practice kissing," Rachel explained, "to make fun of me. So I thought it would be funny if I actually did it, but I was really good at kissing already."

"Would it?"

"What?"

"Be funny."

"I don't know," she said because she hadn't thought he'd question that part of her idea. "I don't like you."

"Okay."

"I thought you'd be okay with it, though," she added.

"I am."

Rachel had gotten the idea from Annie, who she would not have known about if Annie herself had not told her. Bruce had never breathed a word of it, which made him instantly appealing. He was also, objectively, attractive.

"I don't dislike you," she said because his acquiescence made her feel bad about saying she didn't like him.

"It's fine," he said, which annoyed her.

She sat up, still straddling him and practically sitting on his stomach. "I kind of hate you," she said, "the same way I kind of hate Karen."

Bruce took a moment to process this. "For being a bad feminist?" he asked.

"No, dumbass," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's—there's something really attractive about you, but it's the same thing I hate about you, because I wish I could be you."

"Oh."

"I'm so fucking angry," she said. "I'm just pissed off, all the time. About little things, about big things. Everything fucking sucks and I hate it. I wish I could have beat the shit out of Tyler. You know? I'd beat the shit out of a lot of people, if I could. But I can't, because I've got morals. Not that you don't have—you kind of don't have morals. I feel like. You have a billion dollars. But what I mean is, I've got this whole philosophical framework around pacifism that means that I don't get to go around beating the shit out of people. So I have the moral victory, but, you know? Moral victories suck. They're not satisfying. But you, you get to go around hitting people, which I'm sure is very satisfying. And I hate that I wish I could have that."

"Sorry," Bruce said.

"Oh, whatever," she said. "I don't know why I—I shouldn't expect anything from a teenage boy. I've met teenage boys. But you seem like you should know better. Like you're wise beyond your years, or something. Except, actually, I'm pretty sure that's trauma. I'm falling right into the trap of confusing a trauma response for maturity. I hate that, too, I hate how I end up acting when I'm supposed to know better. I'm supposed to be the one who's smart for her age. Instead I'm a teenage girl, and that sucks."

"Yeah."

"Sorry," she said. "I'll get off you, this was a weird idea."

"You don't have to."

"Don't be weird," she warned, swinging her leg backward to sit on the floor. Bruce shot up abruptly as soon as she was out of the way, sitting up and adjusting his shirt. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, sitting with one knee bent.

"If you really don't like being touched, you can say," she said.

"It's fine," he said. She wasn't satisfied by that answer, and he could tell. "Sometimes I don't. This is fine. If you want to do that."

Rachel tentatively set her hand on top of his, resting on the rug. His fingers clenched into a fist under hers, and she took her hand away.

"You didn't like that."

"No," he admitted.

They sat in awkward silence for a moment while Rachel considered his white knuckles, the tension that had appeared in his limbs.

"Was the hand thing not horny enough and that's why it was different?" she asked.

Bruce frowned, thick brows furrowing. Eventually, he said, "It's more complicated than that."

He did not sound sure of himself.