Chapter Text
“You will pay dearly for this.”
“Talk all you want, there’s no getting out of this,” Tim sighed, adjusting his tie. “Charity galas are a rite of passage for Batkids. Just be grateful this one will be short.”
“Stay still,” Steph admonished, running the brush through Damian’s hair again. He swatted her hand away.
“Touch me again and lose that hand.”
“Don’t forget to eat,” Steph advises. “And try not to brandish knives, mkay?”
She sweeps from the room, her purple dress rustling in her wake.
“She is infuriating,” Damian mutters.
“But we love her anyway,” Cass announces, bouncing up from the bed. “Let’s go.”
***
They weren’t kidding. This is hell.
In the last two hours, Damian has had his cheeks pinched more than he can count, his hand shaken by too many strange people, and his cheeks are aching from all the absurd fake smiles.
“Why does Drake get a friend?” He complains, scowling at Conner, who’s leaning against the bar, talking in low tones to Tim, who’s grinning at him. His eyes drift around the ballroom, filled with men and women in sparkling outfits, dripping with enough diamonds to feed a small third-world country.
“Because you only have one friend, and he’s on vacation,” Jason retorts, downing the last of his champagne.
“Other children my age are insufferable. They are impossible to parley with.”
“So you’re admitting you can’t make friends?”
Damian stomps on his foot in response and scowls at his father, who’s smiling at a group of businessmen, tipping his head back to laugh at something one of them says.
“How is Father like this?” He demands. “Yesterday, Alfred had to cut the power to force him away from the Bat-Computer and stop living off of corn chips and Gatorade. And now he’s… socializing?”
“This is Bruce Wayne,” Jason shrugs. “We know Bruce, and Batman. But once in a blue moon, the elusive Bruce Wayne comes out of his cave, shakes off his filth, and interacts with the common folk.”
Damian snorts, popping a grape into his mouth, watching Cass sway elegantly on the dance floor with Duke. They’re both grinning, as if some unspoken joke is being told between them. Steph is speaking to a boy in a corner- likely another poor soul dragged here and left to socialize by his parents.
Grayson isn’t there- lucky bastard. Damian has never wanted to rush to Italy to stop an exploding volcano more than he does right now.
It’s while plotting how to steal a glass of champagne that he sees her.
She’s a petite woman, slipping through the crowd like an eel. Dressed all in black, she wears a smirk on her face as she lifts the diamond necklace from a tipsy woman at the bar and slips out into the hallway.
Finally, something worth doing tonight. Damian stands up from the wall and follows her, ignoring Jason’s questioning glance.
He keeps a close eye on the thief, following with silent footsteps and narrowed eyes. She’s put on the necklace by now, and her open clutch is filled with other jewels of various colors- how did she slip past security? She couldn’t have been on the guest list.
“Well, now you’re just showing off.”
He freezes as his father’s voice radiates from a far corner of the corridor. The woman smirks and snaps her purse closed.
“And so what if I am? You love it.”
“You know I could buy you anything-” He starts, stepping out from the shadows and into the woman’s personal space- they’re almost chest-to-chest. She stares up at him, unfazed by her being caught or the good two feet of height difference.
“And you know I love seeing all those stuffy old bats lose their minds over losing their conversation pieces, Bat,” she replies coolly. “Don’t act like you expected any less. You invited me, and then didn’t talk to me. I was bored.”
His father invited this charlatan? And she knows his identity? This makes no sense, and it spells disaster. Damian squints, trying to puzzle out what’s happening, what his father’s angle is.
“You disappeared.”
“It’s what I do best,” she shrugs. “Well, are you going to let me leave without a goodnight kiss?”
What?!
“Who do you take me for?” He answers, and leans in.
Damian lets out a small, choked noise, and his father’s head snaps up. They make eye contact.
His father lets out a strangled noise. The woman looks over her shoulder and smiles like a cat who just caught a canary.
“Well, I was wondering when you’d make an appearance. You’re awfully quiet.”
He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if he can say anything as the woman steps forward and extends her hand.
“Selina Kyle. We’ve met before, I believe.”
Her voice, rich and melodic, triggers a memory- a fairly recent one, too.
“Better luck next time, birdie.”
“Father,” he says coldly. “Explain why Catwoman is in our house, around unguarded valuables.”
His father looks like he wants to sink into the floor and disappear, so Selina answers for him.
“Because your father can’t resist a good-looking woman. Not that I blame him.”
She turns away and pats Bruce’s shoulder, lightly pecking his cheek before sighing. “Ah, well. C’est la vie. Until next time, I suppose.”
She leaves by way of the window. Bruce still won’t meet Damian’s eyes.
“Really, I thought you would have learned your lesson,” he clucks. “Tell me you are not making any more… amateur mistakes?”
“I don’t need The Talk from my own son,” Bruce says sternly, seemingly recovered.
“Clearly not,” he says derisively. “I expect compensation for the emotional torture of tonight.”
“I’m not buying you more Legos.”
“I’ll tell Pennyworth.”
“You wanted the Colosseum?”
“Tack on the Titanic. That was horrific.”
Bruce sighs. “Deal.”
***
“You met Selina?” Steph asks later, as they’re sprawled on the sofa, drinking root beer, still in their formal attire.
Jason had taken off shortly after the gala ended to “get properly drunk,” as he put it. Tim had left to go over some case files with Kon, and everyone else was asleep. Steph had declared she needed to wash the taste of rich people from her mouth, and Damian had agreed, if only to get a soda out of it.
“Hm,” he replies, leaning his head on the armrest, trying to mentally scrub the image of his father kissing a known criminal from his mind.
“What’d you think?” She asks. He can hear her grin.
He waits a beat before answering. “I have an odd respect for her.”
She nods, downing the last of her soda. “Same. Anyone who can embarrass Bruce is a hero in my book. And she taught me how to rob a jewelry store when I was Robin.”
“Does Father know?”
“What do you think?”
“Touché.”
After a moment, he asks, “Is she at many galas?”
“Sometimes.”
Well. At least he has something to look forward to.