#god i love wayne grayson’s voice for mikey. too fucking good

[lesbianturtle]

but it might be something really good!

[lemonadegarden]

The Arrangement

Bruce Wayne was in a strip club.

Or more accurately, he was being kicked out of one.

This happened quite a lot, actually.

As would be reported by the Gotham society magazines the next day, the he’d had one drink too many, and got a little handsy with one of the entertainers. She was wearing a black thong and not much else, and things went downhill from there. The bouncer, a big man- even taller and wider than Bruce’s six feet and change, caught both of them in a private room in the back, going at it like rabbits. Regardless to say, that particular stripper was the bouncer’s girlfriend, and Bruce had managed to come away from the unfortunate incident with only one black eye.

Could have been worse, honestly.

He’d already come here six times before, and been kicked out on four different occasions- usually for similar reasons. All the strippers seemed to be either girlfriends, sisters, or in one case- aunts of the various bouncers or their friends.

If he played his cards right, this would mean that an article about this incident would take up enough space in the society newspapers, (they were the only ones most people read anyway) to effectively be able to shoulder out any news of the Batman intercepting a certain package being delivered to the Gotham docks that night. The Mexican drug cartel, Bruce suspected.

He was pushed out onto the road, neon lights blinking behind him, where he stood for a while, swaying and pretended to squint at the surroundings confusedly. He was supposed to be drunk, after all. There seemed to be reporters outside the establishment. Several of them, in fact.

Strange. Someone must have tipped them off.

(An anonymous call from a payphone near one Dick Grayson’s apartment.

“Hello? Is this the Gotham mirror? Yeah so I heard Bruce Wayne's getting fucking trashed at the strip club at Jefferson and 32nd, bro.- Fucking wasted. Yeah- Jefferson. That’s right. Strip club- the one with the pink lights.”)

Bruce smiled at them good naturedly. “Fuck,” he laughed, looking at all the cameras, “this doesn’t look very good for my stock points for tomorrow,” His unfocused gaze fixed on one particular camera, and he smiled blearily at the man behind it.

“Hey Jerry!” He said, starting to half stumble, half walk towards the parking lot, “you were here the last time too, right?” He said, slurring over his words, “the last time I got kicked outta here?”

Jerry didn’t bother with a reply, choosing instead to take photos of Bruce stumbling out to the club parking lot in rapid succession. Bruce smiled again and said, “Whoops,” and then bent over a trash can, dry heaving for a while. Then for no apparent reason, he set off towards his car in a loping, uncoordinated jog.

The reporters ran after him, a crowd of cameras and noise. “Brucie! Give us a smile for the cameras!” Someone screamed out from amid the mob.

Bruce stopped walking, and bared his teeth drunkenly for the cameras. The camera flashes were blinding enough to hurt his eyes, but he was used to them by now.

He waved a drunken goodbye to the reporters, and got into the backseat of his car. The driver, sitting ahead, turned around and looked at him through the glass partition. “Home, Mr. Wayne? Or to the Seashell lounge?” He asked, referring to another one of the establishments that Bruce would visit from time to time. He was fixing Bruce with a look not unlike pity.

Bruce smiled winningly, his eyes still glazed over. “Better not, Miles.”

“It’s Milo, sir.”

“Ah, so sorry! Better not, Milo. I should get home. Got a board meeting tomorrow that I’m gonna have a hell of a hangover for. Alfred is not going to be happy.” Bruce said, chuckling. He was supposed to be a happy drunk.

Milo shrugged, turning around and driving them out of the parking lot. The reporters were still outside and started to crowd around the car. Milo frowned at them, giving one of the more persistent men the finger. Loyal to his bones, that’s what Milo was.

“From now onwards, Mr. Wayne, wouldn’t you prefer it if I picked you up from the entrance the next time you got- um, the next time you had to leave early?”

Bruce shrugged and smiled at Jerry through the window. “Man’s got to make a proper exit, Mikey.”

Milo sighed, taking the next turn. “Sometimes, Mr. Wayne, if you don’t mind me being too frank, it feels like you like getting bad press.”

There was no reply. Milo stopped at the next red light, turning around to look at his employer through the glass partition. He sighed again, shaking his head. The man tipped well, and was nice enough to him (except for the fact that he kept forgetting his name) and that was the only reason he still stayed in his employ.

Bruce Wayne was already asleep, snoring softly with that oafish smile still half on his face.

~

Later that night, Bruce walked into the batcave, his phone pressed to his ear, and an ice pack on his black eye. “Thanks again, Tatiana. I hope you’re not in too much trouble with your boyfriend?”

A cheerful voice laughed from the other end of the phone, “Who, Robbie? He ain’t my boyfriend. We’ve just been seein’ each other for a week or so, is all. Keepin’ it casual. He gets a little possessive. I’m sorry that he punched ya. Ever since he got that security job at the club he’s been takin’ himself a little too seriously,” She said, apologetic.

Bruce sat in his chair, looking at the new blueprints for the medbay, “From his perspective, I probably deserved more. I’ve been punched a lot, and not always by angry bouncers. I’m used to it.”

Tatiana suddenly sounded nervous. “Hey, Mr. Wayne? I gotta get back on stage for a bit, I’ve been doin’ extra shifts to cover Candice’s school tuition, but-” she paused, hesitant.

Bruce pressed a few keys and some of the screens switched on- cameras giving him a live audio-visual feed directly from the docks and the roads surrounding it. “What it it?”

Tatiana sighed through the phone. “It’s just that- are you gay, Mr. Wayne? Cause I can’t think of any other reason that you’d ask me to pretend to have sex with ya and then get caught on purpose, I mean gosh- I probably shouldn’t be askin’, it’s none of my business but,” She trailed off, sounding embarrassed.

Bruce gave the screens a wry smile, “That’s okay, Tatiana. I can see why you would have the concerns that you do.”

Tatiana’s relieved exhale was audible, “Oh, thank God. I was worried that you’d get offended an’ try to end our uh- arrangement.”

Their arrangement. Bruce would be spotted going to the strip club and getting inappropriately close to her, or caught sneaking her out of his penthouse in the early hours of the morning, and she would in turn, receive a hefty amount of money wired to her daughter Candice’s college fund- who was only six now, but would certainly need the money later.

“So ya are, then? Gay, I mean?” Tatiana asked, curiously.

Bruce paused for a moment, his hands stilling on the keyboard. He set his ice pack down. He could trust Tatiana; she had never once given him a reason to doubt her, keeping her lips sealed and playing her part in their arrangement perfectly.

“Yes,” he said, resuming his typing, “I’m gay. I don’t know what to say.”

“Oh,” said Tatiana, sounding satisfied. “That’s what I thought, Mr. Wayne.”

“Tatiana,” he said, getting up from his chair and putting his gauntlets on, his phone held between his ear and shoulder, “we’ve known each other for a better part of a year now. You can call me Bruce.”

“Bruce,” she continued, “you gotta stop bottlin’ it up, you know? Be prouda who you are. Stop hidin’. Love is love, no matter what.”

“Absolutely,” Bruce agreed, strapping on his utility belt. “Love is love. I’m coming more to terms with it every day.”

“Good,” Tatiana said earnestly, “I need ta get back onstage, but don’t worry Mr W- Bruce, your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thank you, Tatiana. And I don’t suppose you’d let me help you cover Candice’s tuition fee? I’d be happy to do it.”

“No, Bruce,” Tatiana said, her voice firm, “We’ve talked ‘bout it before. You’re already helpin’ out enough.”

“It’s really nothing to me,” Bruce said, putting his phone on speaker, and picking up his cowl.

“Well, it’s a lot to me, so drop it already, Kay?”

“Alright, then.”

“And remember, be prouda yourself, no matter what. That’s what I tell Candice, and that’s what I’m telling ya.”

“Of course Tatiana. Thank you. Goodbye.”

He hung up, and put on his cowl. When he turned around, Alfred was looking at him, bemused. So was Dick, who was joining him for patrol tonight, suited up in his nightwing costume.

He turned around, heading to the batmobile, his cape billowing behind him. “We have an arrangement.”

Dick looked at Alfred.

Alfred looked at Dick.

Dick shrugged, adjusting his domino mask. “I mean, you can’t deny that it would explain a lot.”

Alfred pursed his lips. “I knew when I agreed to help with the fool’s errand of keeping this crime-ridden, derelict city safe, I was going to have to go through several hardships. However, having to discuss Master Bruce’s sexuality was not one that I expected to face.”

Dick shrugged again, now getting Much more used to the idea, “Maybe there’s a reason he formed a team of predominantly male vigilantes that meet periodically for 'meetings’ in a small confined area in outer space. And every single one of them has to have like washboard abs. Jeez, can you imagine what the men’s locker room of the watchtower must be like? I can understand, cause I’m completely straight, but if Aquaman so much as looked at me- ”

“I’m not gay, Dick,” Bruce called out from the interiors of the batmobile. “and neither is Aquaman. Now stop talking and get in. I want to reach the docks as soon as possible.”

“I’m not gay,” Dick scoffed, climbing into the other seat and strapping in, “says the man who secretly spends his nights in tight black leather and owns a distinctly phallic shaped car. Yeah, right.”

“I agree that the earlier models of the batmobile… may have left something to be desired.”

“Something to be desired, Bruce? The car looked like a penis. I still remember that time when Riddler tried to-”

Bruce inhaled sharply. “We are never talking about that.”

Dick grinned at him. “It would explain your thing with Clark, though. All that soulful staring at each other.”

Bruce sighed. He could never seem to catch a break, somehow.