#apparently there's been a lot of reports of ppl stealing car parts lately

[angelsdean]

umm. something not so chill just happened.

[thethrillof]

Oh, we haven't done this in a while... "The Batman" coffeeshop AU?

i’ve only read like three of those ever so i might be doing this wrong or nonsensically but Fuck It

also i had a bit drafted before but i decided they weren’t right and redid ‘em and it got. really long. i should have anticipated this

bruce is still a rich fella, and has his trauma–the awful mugging and shooting happened, but martha survived (b/c fuck it, let’s allow the woman to not die for fuckin once yanno) so the kid kept within what ppl would call “reasonable” perimeters. still interested in law and stopping shit like that happening again, but he’s not half-killing himself through training.

 the coffee shop was just supposed to be kind of a. chill project i guess? giving teen brucie a bit of business sense but also not slamming him with the responsibility of a big company, as well as connecting him with people a little bit, since he def still withdrew from just about everyone outside the wayne household for a long time.

ethan’s a part-time barista. he’s still a pal of bruce’s, same teen-y age, one of his first after his withdrawing. he’s saving up extra for college, though he’s has a p good scholarship. mutual interest in law means they’re usually found working on their detective skills together after hours.

alfred works there as a manager. he does p well and serves as the face of the place to outsiders–i don’t think wayne industries was quite as big in this ‘verse so bruce got less attention, but he’s still relatively well known in gotham and it’d be better to not have reporters or random ppl who think he’s cute popping up out of the blue.

not that the latter never happens! that’s how miss pamela isley and barbara gordon popped in (they’re def closer in age here), though neither were actually into him–barb does think he’s attractive, but he’s a bit too weird for her to want to peruse at first, and after she gets to know him he’s too serious and brotherly for that to become a thing. pam just wanted to be completely sure he got his ingredients from better places than the huge chains chose and recycled.

eventually pam gets pissed off enough about one of the other companies of gotham that apparently help supply some things for the shop that she nearly scalds bruce and barbara when the former comes over to calm her down when the latter can’t manage it. just fuckin grabs a fresh brew and swings it. she’s not allowed there again for like a year, and that def strains her relationship w/ barbara. though she and bruce end up in a weird friendship because of it and she eventually gets hired to work there.

there’s a guy who shows up whenever the fuck he wants. weirdass times. the place is open p early and closes late, and sometimes he’s waiting there an hour before the sign flips in the morning, sometimes he shows up two minutes before closing time (and has been locked out a few times on purpose. why not close early? aka, fuck this guy, he doesn’t even have a predictable order they can prepare in advance just in case). the name he offers to be written on his cup is “joker”, and eventually bruce scribbles a jester on the side once and that just kinda sticks.

this joker guy has a lot of jobs, apparently? he’s spotted around the city p often. a comedian on stand-up nights, drawing a sizable crowd. paints and sculpts and talks about working on animation. apparently can sing, hangs out near the concert hall a lot b/c he can’t always pay for tickets and harasses the hell out of the opera cast. 

…also a drug dealer who makes his own hallucinogen! bruce and ethan work out the dealing bit pretty early on, but it’s hard to get the police to pay them any attention. they keep a careful eye on him whenever he comes by.

ellen yin moves from metropolis b/c she’s college age and gotham u is actually pretty good. she studies there and ends up being sort of impressed how hard ethan and bruce work on their own studies even though they’re not even out of high school. a strange study group results, and she straight-up gets her own keys to the shop eventually from alfred so the boys don’t need to let her in every single time.

selina kyle’s a regular. everyone’s a little wary due to poison pamela’s meltdown once she starts talking about protecting the environment, but she’s a lot more chill and works with the shop to make it more eco-friendly. she also sometimes shows up with a cat on a gem-studded harness (they’re. probably fake jewels. they gotta be fake jewels who would even do that) and orders some lactose-free milk and lets the kitty sit next to her at the table, and they just sort of let her. why not.

ozzie cobblepot works at a rival café. he’s not quite at the top and the place is failing anyway. when he stops by the coffee shop he tends to ask for the manager every. single. time he’s in there and wastes tons of alfred’s time ranting about non-issues and pretending he’s important b/c he wears a suit.

he definitely just steals shit. just walks by and picks up other customers’ drinks or reaches into purses and backpacks if they’re not paying attention. has been caught a ton of times but again, the gotham police force is garbage and never really bothers trying to go after him in the first place.

in general, everyone has to deal with shit themselves. Police Are Useless.

–except for jim gordon, but he’s only one man and he has a lot on his plate. just a cop, not a commissioner. barbara is incredibly proud of him anyway and will defend him to the point of blows.

in fact, barbara becomes security once she’s older enough. while it’s not being a cop, it’s not super safe. so she never tells her dad about her change of role. she does still help making coffee, so she can say she’s a barista.

dick grayson and fam move to gotham late after the first year. the was an “accident” and now his father doesn’t have the use of his legs. lil robin just started stopping by first b/c they had cheap patries both of his parents enjoyed–life is stressful, they take all the small joys they can manage–and ends up hanging out a lot more, with or without his parents, once he bonds with bruce about trauma at a young age.

it’s a coffee shop, and yin isn’t the only uni student that falls into the place. edward nygma is one of the ones who shows up near closing time and order a pair of the most caffeinated drinks they’ve got, sometimes extending the closing time with his stupid riddles, but it’s better-received than when joker does it. he’s genuinely fun to match wits with and/or watch him and bruce get into flinging riddles back and forth at each other, though whenever bruce wins he gets pissy and sulks off for a while, only to return and pretend it never happened a week later.

eventually he just kind of disappears for a long time, and nobody thinks a ton of it until yin discovers he was kicked out and an incident with the uni prez had to do with him, and the Detective Study Group go to check it out b/c the details the university students got were pretty vague; when they track him down he was in the process of trying to shove chuck gorman off a pier and when he’s nearly stopped by the group edward just. tackles gorman into the ocean and they nearly both drown. luckily all of the study group are great swimmers and manage to rescue them both. (yes, mouth-to-mouth on edward happens. no, there’s nothing sexy about it. that shit is actually really gross u know, in general, and everyone is kind of shaken from seeing one of the more common customers trying to commit a murder-suicide!)

the ambulances are better at getting places than the cop cars so neither of them die. edward ends up in the psych ward for a while and is incredibly surprised when he gets visited by the study group…and they kind of wreck the already-fragile arrogant revenge-centric persona he’d been building up with their further investigating and the Reveal. but that they actually bothered to figure out what happened and not leaving him entirely alone has an impact.

uh. i am v tired and also went four times over the limit there so! i’m going to stop there!