Work Text:
This was how it started:
The Gotham Star inherited, through means as scandalous as their usual content, the rights to the work of a photographer who had died while on their payroll and under contract.
“Photographer”— much like the idea of even calling the Gotham Star a “newspaper”— was a stretch. Paparazzi was the preferred and usual term, but “maggot” and “exploitative artist” covered the rest of the scale from blunt to technically correct but kind. The fact of his passing wasn’t even really news and his own remaining family (whom he would have sold out in a heartbeat if they’d ever done anything remotely remarkable) only missed him in an abstract way.
But what the Gotham Star got out of the deal was a huge cache of photo negatives and digital files, many in folders labeled by celebrity name. Some, they or other papers had already run. Most were mundane, trash as far as material was concerned, but there were a few gold mines here and there for the interns to unearth.
One of those things was a file with Bruce Wayne’s name attached. The man, for all his playboy reputation, was notoriously difficult to find compromising photos of and they would have sold like hotcakes in Wayne’s own city. This file didn’t have much besides women on his arm for lunch dates and pictures of him leaving the hospital after that time he wrecked a Lamborghini. It was an insurance folder, a backup of things to hardsell if money got tight.
But one, one photo had been either neglected or overlooked or considered too dated when it was tucked away. With the public hunger for nostalgia and teenage scandals, the editor of the Gotham Star knew it would make perfect front page spread.
It was of Bruce Wayne, young but still clearly him and probably underage, with bleached hair and eyeliner and acid-washed jeans and a ratty tank top. He was standing outside a now-defunct bar with neon lights, squinting against the flashbulbs with a split lip and bruise rising on his cheek. He looked faintly angry but mostly dazed, out of it. Maybe stoned. Probably stoned.
The Gotham Star, to their minimal credit, did a smattering of actual reporting and ran the story (all rumors and hearsay), with inside info from an old family friend (a man who once played punk rock at the bar), and details from an authority (the former bar owner who was now in hospice on dialysis and spent most of the 1980s in Florida).
They published the picture of young Bruce Wayne with the bold type headline an inch point five high, Gotham Son Hides Shady Past. It was next to the rumors of alien-jellyfish abduction and apple juice laced with cocaine.
And for all their effort and trouble, hardly anyone believed it.
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop the photograph.
Rumors about illicit drug use and alcohol notwithstanding, the photograph more than anything else made a bit of a…splash at Wayne Manor.
Bruce became aware of this when he woke the morning after the Gotham Star ran the story (and someone was always running a story, so unless PR at WE wanted to sue for libel he didn’t pay much attention anymore). He walked into his bathroom expecting to see himself in the mirror, because it was a very normal and reasonable thing to expect.
Instead of bleary-eyed Bruce with graying hair, he found himself staring at young Bruce scaled up and taped above the sink looking every inch the wannabe Robert Smith his sixteen-year-old self had moodily aspired to be.
And that’s when Bruce knew it was going to stick around for a while.
What had actually happened was this:
Bruce Wayne had gone through a phase. For a troubled, wealthy, hyper-intelligent but emotionally repressed boy in the mid 1980s, it made a lot of sense in retrospect.
So he bleached his hair and mussed it into greasy chaos until Alfred stopped even bothering to repress sighs, perfected his eyeliner technique, hid in his room and listened to records of bands he could have afforded to fly in for private shows but never did, and snuck out one time for a rave after spotting the flier pasted on a telephone pole.
The rave was dark and loud and chaotic and actually very pleasant in his estimation. One of the best things was that, because he was almost always photographed in school uniforms or suits and this was entirely a separate crowd, nobody recognized him. He drifted through the noise and dance observing, listening to the music he’d played a dozen times in his own room, until he saw two men slipping something into beers they then held out to young girls.
He wasn’t trained at this point, had limited real detective skills to speak of, and was mostly just in the right place at the right time (or wrong place, wrong time, in Alfred’s later offered opinion). Regardless, he already had an acute sense of justice and didn’t hesitate a second in confronting, and then punching, one of the men while the girls looked on in confusion and horror. One of them threw her beer into the other man’s face.
Bruce was promptly thrashed, both by the men and misunderstanding onlookers who wanted a release for their anger, while also defended by a few who had been standing nearby and overheard shouted explanations.
The police were called, the crowd largely dispersed, and Bruce— in a decision of stubborn indignation, hidden embarrassment, and the correct (if problematic) assumption that his money would protect him— hung around and waited for the cops with a lip dripping blood and an eye swelling shut because he was still determined to identify the two men. The bartender— a woman with spiked hair and spikier bracelets and a furious temper to match— made the bouncers help keep the men on scene.
In the physical pain he was then still wholly unaccustomed to, he entirely forgot that he had both snuck out and that, as a minor even with wealth, they would also hold him until Alfred came to pick him up. He was declared by a medic to be sober, free of drugs, and promptly dragged to Leslie Thompkins for a talking-to and bandaging, during which he uttered words that would later come back to haunt him:
“It’s not just a phase, Alfred!”
Except it had been a phase, and faded along with his strong feelings about the incident, within months. He’d moved on to some martial arts training and also chemistry as a serious interest, giving Alfred a smidgen of hope that he’d turn out a proper, adjusted scientist like his father yet.
That hadn’t exactly gone according to plan, either, but the punk summer of Bruce’s adolescence in a time before smartphones and digital cameras had gone quietly to sleep for many, many years.
And then when it was reawakened, it turned out, the facts of the case as he patiently tried (and also not-so-patiently, let’s be honest) to explain to his stubborn children mattered even less than the entirely fabricated Gotham Star article.
They all had theories.
Damian’s, in a show of childish preteen loyalty, was to staunchly insist that Bruce must have been, had to have been, working undercover. He had a hard time accepting any reality in which Bruce’s formal training didn’t begin as early as his own, and in his eyes, sixteen was as good as grown-up.
Tim helped the least, by gleefully supplementing the picture with the info that he had already known Bruce shared his love (“fondness” or “nostalgia” were Bruce’s preferred terms) for The Clash. It was also Tim who kept enlarging the photo and leaving it tacked up around the Manor and office. Bruce gave up trying to take them down, as Tim had a seemingly unlimited supply and a dogged persistence.
Jason, after two weeks of not hearing from him at all, called to loudly remind Bruce that his own rebellious phase had included signing up for extracurriculars without permission and sneaking lattes after class and if Bruce ever gave him grief about anything ever again he was going to forcibly re-bleach Bruce’s hair. He hung up when he couldn’t stop laughing, so Bruce counted it a minor silver lining in the entire affair and then spent a good ten minutes staring at Tim’s expensive coffee bean collection and wondering what the hell had happened to his parenting skills.
Dick didn’t call. He showed up at the Manor and didn’t confront Bruce directly, but waited until he was in earshot to yell to Alfred about what a hypocrite Bruce was for ever daring to criticize his own college mullet when it had definitely experienced a brief resurgence as a trend. Alfred used the opportunity to remind Bruce, just outside the room eavesdropping, of his own ability to long-remember offenses and grudges by consoling Dick with the fact that the tiny scar beneath Bruce’s lip was not the result of training or fighting. Bruce listened in growing horror as Alfred confided that Bruce, in a further act of rebellion, had bribed an unsavory piercing artist to pierce his lip and then promptly developed a horrible infection that he spent three days hiding.
This did console Dick, who shared the details via group chat before even leaving the kitchen, where he was sitting on the counter while he railed about Bruce.
He included Bruce in the message.
There was another fuck you from Jason and a lecture from Stephanie on needle hygiene and that at sixteen even she had known better.
Cassandra woke him with regular text messages. Bruce knew before he even picked up the phone that it’d be another string of emojis, usually music or hair-themed. She was systematically working through critiquing every aspect of the photo and sometimes sent it with parts circled in red and question marks, treating it as if it were a piece of evidence. But even if it was four in the morning he’d have to pick up the phone, just to check, in case it was an emergency and she had to have known this would be true.
Babs had lip rings and piercing cleanser delivered to the Manor, shipped priority, along with a gift certificate for a local parlor he was never going to use. These came alongside a book of essays about the 1980s punk scene (which he would not admit he actually enjoyed) and a series of various, flowery or superhero-themed Get Well Soon cards in which she had written, “I hope you recover. Can recommend psychologist. Here for you!” in every one.
Stephanie began using slow patrol nights to treat the comm as a radio and piping playlists of music over the line. This did weird things to him emotionally, which he carefully hid or pretended not to feel. She also took any opportunity to offer to lend or buy him more eyeliner since he’d “run out,” which he steadily refused.
That—the makeup—ended up being the thing that began to end some of the teasing, which resurged every time he thought it had fizzled out.
But not before he was forced to sit at the dining room table, wearily putting his foot down against a rare Damian and Tim team-up. They insisted that considering Bruce’s reckless transgressions, Tim was well within reason to insist Bruce allow him to get an experimental computer chip implant that would enhance the effectiveness of his sleep.
“No,” he said for the fifth time. “You don’t have my blessing, or permission, or signature or whatever it is you need. It’s not the same.”
“Yeah, it’s not,” Tim shot back, to Damian’s delighted grin. “I’d actually go to someone with sterilized equipment.”
Alfred was also smiling and not making much effort to hide it, and Bruce turned to him with an exasperated, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
The answer was prompt: “Oh, very much.”
Tim eventually (and sulkily) let the matter drop and Bruce spent an anxious two weeks monitoring the kid’s activities and behavior, unsure if it had been a joke all along or not. He doubted that, if Tim was serious, Bruce’s refusal to give permission would really stop him.
It hadn’t, after all, stopped Bruce.
But the transformation from teasing material to advantageous upper hand was rooted in Stephanie Brown’s neglect to realize that if Bruce Wayne had worn eyeliner as a teenager it meant that he actually knew how to use it.
And Bruce wasn’t the sort of person to let potentially useful skills fall by the wayside. It wasn’t even that long since he’d last used them, but it had never been something the kids had thought about outside of bruise or wound coverage.
Since he was mostly willing the entire mess to fade into the background, he might not have done anything to change their minds if Stephanie hadn’t sprained her elbow.
This was what happened next:
It was late afternoon and Bruce was sitting at the desk in his study, trying to do a little bit of work he’d brought home from the office.
Tim and Stephanie had commandeered the couch with the claim that at the particular time of day, the room had the best natural lighting in the entire Manor. Why they couldn’t have picked another south-facing room in the expansive length of the house, much less the guest bedroom directly above them, was beyond Bruce, but he suspected it had something to do with Stephanie’s phone.
The phone’s tiny speakers were emitting a low-quality audio of a Tears for Fears album which he was steadfastly pretending to ignore, complete with occasional glares in their direction that appeared to delight Stephanie, but he actually didn’t mind. Aside from the audio quality.
It was pure self-preservation that kept him from suggesting they pair the phone with the room’s Bluetooth speakers.
There was a broad spread of makeup around the two of them, a round mirror on the coffee table, and Stephanie was giving Tim verbal instructions for foundation. It was punctuated by arguing and her insisting she could do it herself, which she managed left-handed for the foundation after Tim sat back and crossed his arms at being yelled at for rubbing too hard.
“You’d think you would have just learned to do all of this left-handed by now,” he muttered at her when they moved on to eyeliner. He held it pinched between two fingers like a knife blade.
“I can’t accept criticism from a boy who refused to use shampoo for a week after hurting a finger,” Steph retorted. “Unless you’re willing to admit you were just making excuses.”
Tim grumbled wordlessly in reply.
“Okay, so, corner to corner,” Steph instructed. “Little strokes.”
“Stop doing that thing with your mouth,” Tim ordered. “You aren’t a fish.”
“This is the face, Tim. Everybody makes the face.”
“So, here?” Tim asked, sounding suddenly hesitant.
“You actually have to make contact between pencil and ski– OW. TIMOTHY, I see with these eyes!”
Bruce wasn’t getting any work done, his level of irritation with the music was growing, and he’d had enough. He stood.
“Give me that,” he demanded, holding his hand out. “Before you blind her.”
With a relieved and simultaneously incredulous expression, Tim tossed him the eyeliner pencil without argument. Bruce made an impatient gesture and Tim slid off the couch to sit at the end of the coffee table.
“What are you doing?” Steph asked warily, leaning her head away.
“Helping,” Bruce said succinctly. “Hold still.”
She didn’t exactly relax but she didn’t protest or jump up when he took her chin in his fingers to steady her face, and within seconds had outlined her eyes.
Steph surveyed his work in the mirror and then turned to him with a look of frank admiration.
“Okay,” she said.
“I did actually wear some, more than once,” Bruce reminded her, and his own words concerning his teenage experience seemed to break through for the first time since the Star published the picture.
Tim grumped in the corner, mumbling something sour about renaissance men and ridiculous skill sets.
“Eyeshadow next,” Steph ventured cautiously. “How good are you at blending?”
Bruce was already sorting through the stack of palettes she had spread out on the table. “Better than Tim.”
“I’m right here!” Tim exclaimed. “Right. Next. To. You.”
“Go practice on something inanimate,” Bruce said without looking at him. “Or yourself. Then come back and be outraged.”
“I love you, Timmy,” Steph sing-songed as Tim put his head down on his arms and Bruce accepted the palette Steph picked out of the pile.
“I’m really good at things,” Tim protested feebly from the depths of his shirt sleeves.
“You are,” Bruce agreed. “But not this. Yet.”
Steph closed her eyes and let him work.
“Where did you practice, other than bruises?” she asked. She was smirking. “Selina?”
“Diana,” he answered, knowing Diana wouldn’t mind and deliciously enjoying getting to inspire a bit of awe for the first time in weeks. Months, maybe.
“Ohmigod,” Steph breathed, too shocked to even squeal. “I need to hear this story right now.”
“No,” Bruce said. “Your brushes need to be cleaned. Actually, these aren’t even good ones. They’re not worth it.”
“I’ve been busy,” Steph said defensively. “And I’d get new ones but we’re not all made of money.”
“Hmm,” Bruce said, moving to the second color in the palette he was balancing on his knee. “Are you going to be angry if I tell Tim to order some?”
“I’ll fake it so we can keep being disgusted with each other,” Steph said cheerfully. She got close to the mirror and made a small noise of satisfaction.
“I’m not disgusted by you,” Bruce said. “Tim has my card. Order some brushes later.”
“Thank you,” Steph said. “It’s really like, the least you could do, considering everything I do for this family.”
“I am aware,” Bruce said drily. “And no, I’m still not telling you about Diana.”
“That means he slept with her,” Steph said bluntly to Tim, who clapped his hands over his ears in response. “Just sayin’.”
“I did not,” Bruce said, which was true, but it was pointless. Steph didn’t care if it was true or not, she just wanted to see him squirm or blush a little while holding a mascara brush out to the side.
It worked, just barely. But it did work.
What had actually happened with Diana was this:
The Justice League was relatively young but had already established a core group, which mostly meant that Hal Jordan shot dirty glances at Batman and pleading glances at Superman when he suspected they were making plans without him.
As a rule, he declined invitations from Clark, to hang out with Barry or for other vague “plans” but this had never stopped him.
Diana Prince had lived and moved in the world of men for years by this point but still occasionally stumbled upon areas of modern development that were intriguing to her. When she approached Batman alone during one of his rare guard duty shifts, it was with a question he was not expecting.
“Is waterproof lipstick truly a thing?”
Batman turned his head just slightly from the monitors, which was about as good as him reeling in shock.
“Why are you asking me?”
“I have asked Hawkgirl and in return received a monologue on the unfairness of earth’s female beauty standards. I don’t think she realized it was a legitimate question and, as I agreed with many of her points, did not wish to press and leave her with the impression I was not listening.”
“You know other people,” Batman hedged, flicking through monitor views.
“You tend to know things,” Diana said, sitting on the edge of the desk. He reached out and slid his coffee mug slightly out of the way; it said PROUD PARENT OF GOTHAM PS 35 HONOR STUDENT on the blue ceramic.
Batman didn’t answer and Diana crossed her arms. Her mouth seemed to be trying to decide if it should display amusement or apology. “So, this is not an area in which you are knowledgeable.”
“It is,” Batman countered. “I’m thinking.” He looked over his shoulder.
“It is not a trap,” Diana promised.
“Waterproof lipstick is a thing,” he said. “You wear makeup.”
The intonation was flat but Diana understood he was asking a question of his own.
“I do. My mother educated me in the art of making cosmetics when I had reached the appropriate age, but many of the ingredients are difficult to find and it is time-consuming. A friend once took me to a drugstore to try American products, but that was many years ago and I found the quality lacking, especially for battle or travel.”
“A drugstore,” Batman echoed, with a faint touch of horror. He took a sip of coffee from the blue mug and looked up at her. “I think you could find things that are satisfactory now. I’d recommend an Ulta or Sephora.”
“What is an Ulta?” Diana asked, hoping he’d take the hint.
He sighed. “There’s one outside of Gotham in a suburban shopping center that’s usually well-stocked. But I can’t go like this.”
“When is an acceptable time?” Diana asked. “I can meet you there if it is convenient.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, after thinking. “Noon, eastern standard.”
“Will your son accompany us?” Diana enjoyed the enthusiastic young boy, Jason, and the flushed silence he fell into whenever she was nearby. She was hoping for an opportunity to make him feel more at ease.
“Robin will be at school,” Batman said.
“That is unfortunate,” Diana said. “You are certain you don’t mind?”
“I never said that,” Batman answered stiffly, staring at the monitors. She waited. He cleared his throat. “No. I don’t mind. I need some things anyway.”
“Do you wear makeup?” Diana sounded delighted. “Or is it a gift for a female friend?”
“To cover bruises,” he said. “For work.”
“Oh.” It was less exciting and a little sad. Diana scrunched her mouth to one side and studied him. He looked uncomfortable.
“…and also I need a gift,” he admitted.
“Perfect,” Diana clapped his shoulder. “I will see you then.”
Noon the following day was as bright and cloudless and sunny as Diana’s expression when she found him sitting in a Alfa Romeo in the plaza parking lot. He had driven above the speed limit on the way there, not because he was running late but because he could, and had already been waiting several minutes when she leaned down by his window.
“You came!” she exclaimed when he rolled the window down.
“So did you,” he said evenly. She was in a sundress that still managed to look glamorous even if was a basic cotton blend and her bare arms were packed with clearly defined muscle. There was a purse on her shoulder that seemed incongruous; bags were not his strong suit. This one was quilted and in a bright, flowery print and it was annoying him that he couldn’t recall the brand. He was fairly certain he could remember Jason complaining about something similar being a trend at school.
“Nice bag,” he said, stepping out of the car.
“It is…inconvenient,” she said, giving it a dirty look. “But I thought it best to blend in. The pockets are too small to be useful. The strap is ill-designed.”
“Blending in is a good idea,” Bruce agreed. “Let me see the strap.”
He examined the adjusting buckle as they walked toward the store and Diana ignored him when he tried to give it back.
He ended up holding the bag.
“What are we looking for?” she asked, breathing in deeply when they stepped into the air conditioned interior. It smelled faintly of a muddled mix of perfume and hair dye, almost like a beauty parlor but more vague.
“Anything,” he said. “What do you want?” His own list was short and memorized and easy to pick up as they browsed, assuming certain skin tones were in stock.
“All of it,” Diana said. “A whole face. That’s the term, isn’t it? A new face?”
“I don’t know,” he said evasively, less willing to admit to any shaky knowledge of makeover lingo than he was to owning up to his knowledge of makeup itself. He had, though, aside from his past, spent a lot of time around models and young women trying to impress him by verbally competing with each other.
“Hm. Well. If you were choosing, what would you start with?”
Bruce eyed her for a moment, partially suspicious and reluctant and partly appraising her face again. He wished the lights overhead weren’t florescent.
“This way,” he said, taking a left toward an aisle that had a long line of bases and foundations. “You aren’t allergic to anything.”
“Only dishonesty,” she quipped and he suppressed a sigh.
“You have warm tones,” he said, stopping in front of a display. “Rose undertones.”
“Thank you,” she replied, examining the long rows of bottled liquid foundation.
“It was a fact, not a compliment,” he said, feeling both a need to be truthful and a little awkward about clarifying.
“I know,” she answered. “Which one will not come off under blood? Sometimes, there is splatter.”
And while the employee approaching them paled slightly at hearing this, and hesitated to offer them help, it was actually exactly the sort of thing Bruce did happen to know.
They spent two hours and close to a thousand dollars between them, most of it Bruce’s money which he quietly insisted on and she only argued about out of a semblance of some cultural custom (offer, refuse, offer, refuse, offer, accept). It was unclear if this was her own habit or if she assumed it was his. Some of the money was spent on Bruce’s own things, like a concealer that wouldn’t rub off on shirt collars, and nail polish for Selina.
Diana thanked him, genuinely and enthusiastically, and teased him a bit for good measure. He accepted it because it was Diana and she had spared him the involvement of others.
Despite the fact that she looked stunning in the pale teal sundress, he did not sleep with her or come anywhere close to it. She kissed him on the cheek in farewell, which she had never done while he was in the cowl, and walked away humming.
The next time he saw her, he recognized the lipstick. He didn’t mention it and neither did she, but he did pretend to examine something in a folder during the Watchtower meeting to hide a slight smile.
They never returned to shop together, but sometimes she still sent him texts asking for his opinion on colors or brands and, as he always had an answer, he was still fielding regular questions or her own offered opinions on products when the picture came out. If she thought anything of it, she didn’t say, and when he replied to a text about a new contouring highlighter, he was grateful.
Stephanie, as previously mentioned, was less than silent or merciful, and his help with her own makeup did little to put an end to the attention.
In fact, it merely shifted it.
This is what happened next with Stephanie:
For some time, Stephanie had been occasionally updating a YouTube channel with product reviews and makeover tutorials. She was fairly good at it, if terribly inconsistent about an uploading schedule— that, to be fair, had far more to do with her mix of school and nightlife and less to do with her as a person.
The channel had originally been a way to explore a hobby and relieve stress, and she was still hoping that at some point she’d hit the elusive viewership stats that netted her free product samples. So far, this had not happened, despite having one video titled “Dolphin Mystique Makeup Tutorial” that had been a late night joke between her and Kara Danvers and had somehow gotten 14,388 views (and counting). Many comments implied that it was being viewed seriously and requests for Shark and Octopus companion videos followed.
When Bruce Wayne did her makeup in his study while Tim sulked and looked at hoverboard engine schematics on his phone, it did not occur to Stephanie to exploit this in any way beyond some additional ribbing and gratitude for her spared, sprained elbow.
It wasn’t even when she was half-heartedly browsing an article about how to make a YouTube channel take off. She knew she lacked consistency, which was a major factor, and she didn’t have the time or energy or desire to seriously devote herself to it. But one of the points in the mostly asinine article was to have a celebrity guest. She dismissed it without much thought, but it continued to nag at her for days.
And it likely would not have turned into anything at all, except she got into a stupid argument with Jason Todd of all people, while under the influence of some fairly heavy painkillers after yet another injury. She was not happy about the painkillers, despite knowing that she needed them, and had become a very angry and morose kind of loopy.
She wasn’t sure why exactly Jason was in the cave that night; Cassandra had dragged her there mostly for Alfred’s care. He was sitting nearby working on something and it gradually dawned on her, while she sat and blinked around the cave from a gurney, that he’d been put in charge of keeping an eye on her.
“I want to get out of this fucking cave,” she said, expecting hearty agreement. Maybe if he was just as fed up, they’d make a break for it together.
“Hmm,” he said noncommittally instead.
Stephanie twisted the sheet in her hands, not fretfully but more like she was trying to strangle it.
“He doesn’t like me,” she complained loudly, trying again for some form of sympathy. The painkillers were making her angry but also left her feeling very needy, desperate for connection.
Across the Cave, Bruce didn’t turn or call out rebuttal.
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here,” Jason said without looking up from whatever he was doing. He was cleaning his fingernails with a knife.
Stephanie was now growing furious, with only slight provocation. Jason was not supposed to be the one that disagreed with her about this sort of thing. “This sort of thing” being, of course, Bruce.
“I mean, he feels obligated,” Steph tried a final time. “But that’s like, about it.”
Jason looked up then and met her doped-up gaze.
“Have you asked him to do anything outside of, well, down here?”
“Like a baseball game?” Steph snorted and winced. “Or baking cookies?”
“Fuck no, don’t ask him to bake,” Jason said passionately. He folded the knife closed and put it in his pocket.
Near the computer, Bruce shifted in his seat enough for her to notice. There was a sound like coughing or maybe laughter.
“I think I might be dreaming,” Stephanie said, ignoring Bruce and focusing (or trying to) on Jason. Her attention was a little…drifty. “What were we talking about?”
“Listen, I know better than anybody how much B can screw up.” Jason was sitting in a chair closer to the gurney now. “He’s not the easiest person to get along with, especially now.”
“I wondered where you’d gone,” Steph said in a triumphant whisper. “Welcome back.”
Jason gave her a profoundly annoyed eyebrow raise and continued. “But you know what pisses me off?”
“Bad communication?” Steph guessed, pointedly.
Jason leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “The more time I spend around here again, the more I realize nobody except Al gives a fuck what B does out of mask. You complain or joke about him doing it all you want, but when was the last time you asked him about anything other than casework?”
Steph frowned at Jason. Jason frowned back.
“B,” he yelled, twisting abruptly in his seat. “Wanna play Risk?”
There was a long pause and a cleared throat, then a bit of surprised hesitation in Bruce’s tone. Stephanie was pretty sure it was just the drugs. “Uh, sure. Yes. Give me a few minutes?”
“I gotta get Cass down here to babysit Blonde Blunder,” Jason called back. “I call green.”
“Blue,” Bruce answered, like it was an automatic reflex.
Stephanie flopped back on the gurney and pressed her lips together. She considered that she might actually be dreaming after all, but all that did was reduce the risk. The intercom buzzed and Jason talked to Alfred over it for a moment and then sat back down; she was too distracted to even whine about the nickname or the fact that she needed babysitting.
“So,” she said, rolling onto her side to face the just-slightly older boy. “You’re saying he cares but doesn’t show it well. I still don’t buy it, not for me. Maybe you, but you’re like, his son.”
“Try it,” Jason challenged, a gleam in his eyes. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, so his hair hung in his face and shadowed his features. Stephanie thought he was being dramatic on purpose and she squinted suspiciously at him. “I bet he’d surprise you.”
“B,” she called, loudly and as clearly as she could manage with her drug-addled tongue.
“Stephanie,” he replied. He still hadn’t once turned to face them, as far as she could tell.
She paused because for a long time, she didn’t know what she was going to ask him. It was just the impulse to shove it in Jason’s face and prove that he was wrong. She thought of the article and her neglected YouTube channel and decided, what the hell, and asked:
“Will you film a makeup video with me? A celebrity guest could really help my subscriber count.”
There was a long silence during which Jason pulled his knife back out and trimmed another nail.
“Alright,” Bruce said.
“See? I tol– what?” Stephanie jumped from self-satisfied to shocked in only a second, slightly longer than a non-drugged reaction time but still pretty fast.
“Find a time,” Bruce said. “Let me know.”
“Oh,” Stephanie said hollowly. “Oh. Okay.”
Jason smirked.
She wanted to slap him.
But she was too busy trying to figure out why her face was starting to cry.
“Sleep it off, Short Stuff,” Jason said, patting her head. Cassandra was emerging from the elevator with a mug clutched in both hands. Stephanie nodded and closed her eyes.
When she woke up, she had to text Jason to sheepishly ask how much had possibly been drugs. She remembered all of it, but wasn’t sure it was accurate.
It turned out, of course, that it was accurate, and now she had to plan out a video to film with Bruce Wayne for her channel or risk the additional self-reproach for not following through. Her newest ipsy bag arrived in the mail the next afternoon and that was why, and how, Bruce ended up sitting in the living room at the Manor with a camera on a tripod a few feet away from him. He had dressed for the occasion and Stephanie had almost made him go change, since “dressed” and “occasion” together as terms resulted in him coming downstairs in a suit like he was going to be interviewed by Forbes or something.
“Is this live?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the couch. The light on the camera was still dark instead of red.
“No, I’ll edit it,” Stephanie replied. “But only a little.”
Bruce seemed at ease, which was both infuriating and comforting. At least he didn’t seem like he hated it, and for all her antagonism she didn’t really want pity-involvement from him.
“Hey, this is BestDressedSteph,” she greeted the camera. The light was now blinking as it filmed.
It took three takes before she was satisfied with the introduction and Bruce still seemed unclear on what an ipsy bag was, but she figured his confusion would make for good viewer count at least. It was hard to tell if he was faking it or not.
Once they actually opened the bag, his whole demeanor changed from mild guest to engaged reviewer. Even knowing he’d done her makeup a few weeks prior, Stephanie was shocked and let the camera keep going.
She pulled out a lip stain and unscrewed the cap, he took it and tested it on the back of his hand.
“Too thin,” he decided, holding it up for her to see. He was kind of right, it was a little translucent. “And it’s a bit dated, as a color.”
“Vintage?” Stephanie suggested.
Bruce made a face of mild disgust. “It’s not old enough.”
She tried to give some feedback in the video about the scented organic lotion that had come in the bag, but it was hard to stay on track when he was beside her reading labels on the other items.
“No-Tell Motel is a Urban Decay color,” he said to a lipstick, midway through her attempt at the prickly pear lotion comments. He sounded actually pissed. “This is name theft.”
Stephanie looked directly at the camera and mouthed oh my god.
“And you pay for this?” Bruce demanded next. “Somebody supposedly professional picks these out and sends them to you?”
He was prying open the tiny tube of skin-firming cream. It had little black specks in it.
“This is ridiculous,” he said sharply. “You could slice your cornea with this. It doesn’t belong anywhere near your face.”
Stephanie let the camera keep rolling.
“This one isn’t bad,” he said, popping the plastic casing off a tiny palette of eye shadow. “These colors aren’t terrible.” There was a tiny brush in his hand and Stephanie gaped at it.
“Did you just have that with you?”
“I came prepared,” Bruce said drily. “You or me?”
“Uh…you?” Stephanie guessed, and then realized he meant the eye shadow. He was already brushing it across the back of his hand again.
“It’s still good,” he decided. “But the rest of this is a waste of your money.”
“I guess 4 out of 10 this month,” Stephanie surmised for the camera.
“I could do a better job picking things than this,” Bruce said, zipping the bag shut. “We’re doing that. Let’s go, you can edit this later.”
These words, of course, ended up in the video. As did Stephanie laughing when she demanded he sit back down and let her try the lip stain.
“You look like a sickly vampire,” he told her once it was on. “It’s not a bad look for you.”
“For me?” Stephanie laughed. “You’re the one who can pull off the Nosferatu look.”
She was feeling giddy with the success of filming, with his reactions, and then her heart nearly stopped out of fright because he was recapping the lip stain and he laughed. Actually, really laughed, and handed her a tissue from the coffee table they’d pushed just slightly to the side.
“Wipe that off. We’re going to the store so I can replace what I’m throwing away for you.”
Stephanie could record the wrap-up later, so she just turned the camera off and took the ipsy bag items back into their bag before he could get to them.
She uploaded it later, after a shopping trip. It got more views than her videos usually did, as predicted and hoped. The video she uploaded after it was a Ulta haul video. She stopped teasing Bruce about his eyeliner days-- almost.
This was how it ended:
Bruce Wayne survived the long summer after the Gotham Star unleashed a tiny slice of his past onto his unsuspecting household. The jokes eventually died down, the teasing relented, the music over the comms became enjoyable instead of weaponized. Tim did not get a computer chip implant and Damian gradually accepted that there was no exciting backstory to his father’s brief punk-tinged rebellion.
And if Bruce Wayne bought a mid-price seat ticket that fall for The Cure’s reunion tour while out of town on a business trip, if he threw on some eyeliner again and went anonymously, nobody was the wiser.
Because Bruce Wayne was really good at makeup.