Work Text:
The tower had been bombed not so long ago. Then, Bruce had been too busy dealing with the Riddler, then the flood, and everything that had come after it. There was never time for anything back then.
Alfred had long healed and Gotham was finally back on its feet, months later. It was time to put his home back together too.
He had told Alfred what he wanted and left the rest up to him.
For the most part, Bruce avoided the workers. It wasn’t too hard. He slept most days, wiped after a whole night of patrolling and fighting petty criminals. If he wasn’t sleeping, he retrieved to the Bat cave, far from the loud reconstruction.
An issue arose, something Alfred didn’t bother mentioning to Bruce when he was too busy working in his cave.
And so when, for once, Bruce was awake during the day and couldn’t enter the cave from inside his home because the workers were currently in that area, he had to well, make an appearance.
Bruce was hungry, had been for hours. He had nothing stashed in his room and while he supposed he could go a few days without food, it wasn’t the most pleasant thing. He had texted Alfred to get him some food, but Alfred had called him to inform him he was dealing with a problem and that Bruce was old enough to head to the kitchen and heat up something from the fridge.
Alfred was right. Bruce was old enough, and probably too old to be avoiding the workers in his house like this.
When the cramps in his stomach grew too uncomfortable, Bruce decided to weather the storm and exit his spacious bedroom. He had a hoodie on and sweatpants. He didn’t pull the hood up, sure that like this, most people wouldn’t recognize him.
Nobody had seen Bruce Wayne outside of a suit in years.
Hands in his pockets, he made his way towards the staircase. He met a pair of guys, carrying something further down the hall. The first one gave him a nod of acknowledgement and the other straight up ignored him, focused on not dropping the stuff.
Bruce relaxed. He needn’t have worried. They were all just doing their work and didn’t really care about him.
The noise got louder the closer he got to the stairs. He looked downstairs, his elbow brushing the railing. Bruce’s eyes widened at the state of his tower. What he could see from up here… it was a mess.
Alfred had been busy with some problems.
Bruce quickly grabbed his phone and dialed him. Alfred picked up after two rings. “What’s going on?”
“Ah, you’re out of your room?” He must have heard the noise in the background of the call.
“Yes. What am I seeing?”
“When they were about to change the floor, they found some damaged cables. And issues with the vents. It’s an old building.”
“So?”
“So the construction manager called in a friend of his for some advice. An installer. I’m waiting for them to decide what needs to be done so I can take care of it.”
“How long will it take?” More people in his home. For longer than planned. Bruce held back an irritated sigh. These people weren’t at fault.
Alfred sighed. “Longer than expected, for sure. I’m waiting for an update. I’ll let you know when I have it.”
“Good. Thanks, Alfred.” Bruce hung up and cast a wary look downstairs.
Nobody had noticed him up here and so he watched the workers and planned the best possible route to the kitchen.
The manager was easy to spot, dressed fancier than anybody else, with a helmet and a clipboard. His jeans, while nice, were dirty up to his knees from all the dust around. A brown-skinned man stood next to him, arms crossed over his chest, wearing a dusty overall. There was a name, either his or of his company, embroidered across the left side of his chest. Bruce couldn’t read it from this far and up. The man ran a hand through his greying hair and frowned at whatever the manager was showing him on the clipboard.
Somebody turned on a drill down there, immediately catching his attention. One of the works. There were seven people in total. He vaguely recognized some of them from their work here the previous days. Only one other person was wearing an overall of the same color as the manager’s friend—the man must have been the installer, Bruce deduced immediately. It wasn’t hard to guess.
His attention returned to the manager and the installer, still discussing something together. Then, the installer turned to the other guy in the overall and beckoned him, calling out what Bruce supposed was his name. He couldn’t hear it over the noise of the drill.
The guy saw it, however, and carefully dropped his tools. He jogged over to the installer, finally turning enough for Bruce to see him.
Well, see more of him.
He had had his bare back turned to him. Glistening with perspiration as he worked hard, strong muscles and a perfect expanse of brown skin. Bruce had taken it into account, filing away the attractive sight and had moved on with his inspection.
Now, though…
As the man turned, Bruce’s eyes slid down to his arms, his bicep flexed slightly as he had put down the tool. His forearms were toned. And then he turned further and Bruce’s mouth went dry. His chest was like a sculpture, round pecks and defined abs.
Bruce pushed back the urge to lick off the drop of sweat that slid down the man’s chest and down to where his overall was tied across his hips.
He needed to pull himself together. He had to find a way to the kitchen. The manager and the installer were out of the question. They were the bosses here, would feel a social obligation to greet him as the owner of the building, would try to update him on the state of things. He would have to avoid them. The other workers wouldn’t pay him much mind, as proven by the ones he had met earlier in the hall.
Bruce snapped his eyes further up to the man’s face instead of his body and then instantly froze.
It had taken his brain a second, but it was him. That was Officer Martinez. Sweating and half-naked in his tower. Bruce swallowed. He had never seen the officer like this.
But the curls, the posture as he came to stand by the installer and listened in—his uncle, the installer, of course—the way he moved his body, it was Martinez all right.
His curls were the same, flopping against his forehead. He was buffer than Bruce would have expected. He had thought all that was the jacket. Without the hat, it had taken him a while to recognize him, but now Bruce couldn’t unsee it.
He feared he would never unsee it. Every time he would see Officer Martinez on a scene, as Batman, this image would come to his mind. Accompanied by the dryness in his throat and the heat pooling in his groin.
Bruce was seeing the officer in a whole new light and he wasn’t sure he liked it. This would mess with his mind later on. He would have to compartmentalize when he was going to be out there. In Gotham, a murder investigation was just a matter of time. He wouldn’t be surprised if he saw Martinez on the job by the end of the following week.
With Martinez down there, Bruce was even more reluctant to go through there. He didn’t have much of a choice, though. He calculated the best route and waited till the drill started up again and the three of them were engaged in a conversation.
Then, Bruce quickly made his way down the stairs, keeping to the side further away from them. The trick was to hurry, but not be too fast because then that would be suspicious. He walked past them, unnoticed. He was glad to have put on at least his slippers. Usually, he wouldn’t have bothered, but there wasn’t much of a floor left right now.
He made it to the kitchen in one piece, still sane.
Bruce was reheating the first thing he found in the fridge, some kind of pasta, when he heard steps behind him. Familiar steps. And not Alfred.
“Mr. Wayne.” The steps halted. “Sorry to bother you,” Martinez said from behind him.
Bruce turned, surprised the officer had recognized him. He hid the expression and nodded. “Officer. It’s, uh, been a while.”
The man’s eyebrows rose all the way to his hairline. Bruce wondered if he had said something wrong.
“Can I do something for you?” he tried again.
“Right, sorry, no. I was just about to get some water. Didn’t expect you to remember me.”
Bruce froze. He had made some kind of error here, he could tell.
Martinez’s hands went up. “I’m not blaming you or anything. It was just super long ago, that’s all.”
Fuck. Bruce didn’t remember when he had seen Martinez as himself. “Right.”
“Really, no offence. That funeral was a stressful event for everybody.” He cringed, remembering it.
It finally clicked in Bruce’s mind. The Riddler’s murder spree. The funeral that was never finished, the explosion that had rocked the church… he had been there and so had Martinez.
Bruce nodded, feeling rather awkward. “It’s fine,” he assured the man. He subtly cleared his throat, trying to find something to say. “The glasses are over there. The second cabinet.” He pointed to the side.
Martinez finally relaxed and sent him a grateful smile. He walked to the said cabinet and reached out to retrieve a glass. Bruce watched his arms flex as he did so—thank god he had put on a t-shirt before coming here. Not that it was much of an improvement, the white fabric clung tightly to his damp torso.
Bruce needed a glass of water too.
He got back to reheating his food. It was almost done anyways.
Food in hand, he sat down on one of the stools in front of the counter. Martinez turned off the tap. “How come you’re here?” he asked, thought it was a polite thing to do. He really wanted to know why, though.
“Just helping out my uncle,” he said, then froze with the glass nearly to his mouth and brought it back down. “He’s the installer.”
“Because the tower needs… installing things,” Bruce said lamely when he didn’t know what else to say.
For his credit, Martinez didn’t outright laugh at him. He smiled and tried to hide it behind his glass as he took a gulp of the water. “Sure does, Mr. Wayne.”
“Bruce.”
“Alright, Bruce. Daniel, then.” His grin widened.
Bruce took another bite of his food. What had just happened?
He found that he didn’t mind Daniel calling him by his name. He actually enjoyed the normalcy of this whole thing. Mr. Wayne felt wrong, somehow.
Daniel emptied the whole glass of water at once, then sighed. “I should get back out there.” He put the glass in the sink. “See you around, Bruce.”
“Yeah. I’ll be… here.”
It was his home after all. Where else was he supposed to be. Bruce could have sworn that Daniel winked at him before he left.
Bruce stood up to get some water.