Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It’s time to play the music, it’s time to light the lights,
It’s time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight!”

The manor ought to have been silent as the grave when Bruce returned, so it caught him by surprise when he heard a familiar jingle drifting through the empty halls. He paused at the foot of the grand staircase, head tilted to the side as he listened to the Muppet Show theme song jangling away happily. It sounded like it was coming from the first floor, which meant the most likely origin was Dick's bedroom. Which would be fine, if it also wasn't almost three am.

Bruce sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

The subject of 'appropriate bedtimes' had been a tricky one to enforce over these last few months. It was a hard sell when Bruce had been absent so often, always out at night under the guise of socializing or working. It had gotten even more difficult when Dick discovered the truth: that Bruce was Batman and spent his nights fighting crime. Then things had gotten really difficult.

Bruce could still recall the particular icy brand of terror that had consumed him when he'd come home late one night to find Alfred tearing the manor apart and Dick gone. Apparently, if Bruce wouldn't let Dick come with him, the boy would take it upon himself to find Tony Zucco on his own.

After a frantic search through the city that was honestly a lot harder than it should have been considering Dick was nine and Bruce was Batman, he'd caught up with the boy in the Little Italy district beating the shit out of some mobsters and arguably winning by their sheer inability to hold onto him for more than ten seconds. But Dick was still small, and there was only so much a boy could do against hardened criminals.

Bruce doesn't recall leaping from the rooftop to the ground. Just that one minute, a man had thrown Dick against the wall and was lurching toward him with a knife, and the next, that man was lying in a crumpled, twitching heap at Batman's feet. The rest of the fight was a similar, bloody blur that had left Bruce standing alone in a circle of flickering light from the street lamp overhead—blood slick on his gauntlets and the feel of broken bones crunching under his steel-capped boots. He'd turned toward Dick, still cowering against the wall, half expecting the boy to finally see him for the monster he was and run. But Dick had run to him instead, throwing himself into Bruce's arms, sobbing apologies and promises to do better next time.

And there would be a next time, Bruce knew. And a next, and a next. Whether he intervened or not, Dick would never stop trying to find the man who had killed his parents.

Bruce knew what that was like.

It was just a question of whether he'd survive long enough without Bruce's help. And so Robin had been born, and with it, laughably, the only bargaining chip Bruce held at trying to enforce some sense of normalcy in Dick's life. The boy might be joining him on the streets of Gotham on the weekends, but there were rules about school nights, and Dick was well past his allotted bedtime.

Not even Alfred was awake at this hour.

At least, Bruce hoped he wasn’t.

The faithful butler had been sick with a cold all week, a nasty hacking thing that rattled painfully in his chest and made every inhale sound like it was being dragged out of him. He'd blamed it on Dick, citing that children were germ factories and they should never have let him go to public school, where the germs were bound to be worse. Bruce had rolled his eyes. He'd been around Dick all week, and both he and the boy felt fine, but he also couldn't argue that the old butler was sick. Though just how sick hadn't been apparent until Bruce caught him taking a swig of Nyquil in the kitchen. Bruce had witnessed this rare event and promptly panicked. For Alfred, a cold that couldn’t be fixed by tea laden with honey was a serious thing indeed. Bruce had responded by cutting his late-night excursions to the quick to make sure Alfred was getting enough rest.

He had spent most of the week rattling around in the cave, mulling over cold cases and supervising Dick's training. Tonight was the exception, but only because Bruce had been out at a gala gathering intelligence for a case, or what passed for intelligence among Gotham’s social elite. The most strenuous thing he had done was shake hands, smile for the press, and nurse the same glass of champagne all night while pretending it was his fifth. Nothing that required Alfred to attend to him afterward. But with the butler abed, that left the problem of disciplining Dick to him, and Bruce could think of nothing he desired less in this exact moment.

For a brief, fleeting moment of cowardice, he almost turned to go through the clock down into the cave, but no. Rules had a purpose—to keep Dick healthy and safe—and if Dick couldn't be trusted to stick to something as simple as a bedtime, then how could Batman possibly trust Robin in the field? What other rule would the boy flout because he felt like it? He could get himself injured or, worse, killed.

Do we perhaps think we might be catastrophizing a little, said a thought that sounded an awful lot like Alfred, but Bruce brushed it aside, already taking the stairs two at a time and mentally rehearsing what to say in the face of what was going to undoubtedly be a lot of sunny, good-natured backtalk and exasperated eye-rolling.

Bruce swore the boy was nine going on nineteen sometimes with the level of sass he could exude with just a look. Like Bruce was being ridiculous (arguable), and Dick couldn’t believe he was the adult left in charge of him (understandable). He was more mindful of Alfred—presumably because the butler fed him and kept him from running out of clean socks—but these days, Bruce frequently found himself locked in a battle of wills with a nine-year-old and, more often than not, losing. It was a humbling dilemma.

The music grew louder as he got closer, a flickering tableau of warm colors spilling out through the crack in Dick’s door.

“Why do we always come here? I guess we’ll never know.
It’s like a kind of torture to have to watch the show.”

Bruce snorted. Honestly, what was the Muppets show even doing on at this hour? Surely, it was well past bedtime for anyone who’d be interested in watching it. Was there some clamoring demand for the Muppets to be aired past midnight, made up of third shifters, vigilantes, and criminal masterminds that Bruce didn’t know about?

At least he’s watching something age-appropriate, he thought.

… The Muppets were age-appropriate for a nine-year-old, right?

Or was he thinking of Sesame Street?

…

They both had Kermit the Frog in them; that was probably close enough.

Bruce shook his head. Why was he even worrying about this? Dick had helped him break up a drug ring by the docks last week. What did it matter if he was watching age-appropriate content on late-night television?

Probably because he’s nine, and he helped you break up a drug ring last week, said a guilty voice in the back of his mind. Bruce quashed it, but like a hydra of self-recrimination, it merely grew more heads, snarling and snipping at his heels with every step.

Halting outside Dick’s room, Bruce peered through the crack in the door. Some small part of him had hoped the boy might have just fallen asleep with the TV running, but even from this limited angle, he could make out the outline of Dick’s upright shadow illuminated by the glow of the screen. He sighed. Oh well, here went nothing.

He knocked on the door, pushing it open a fraction. “You should be in bed.”

To his surprise, Dick jumped, sending a bowl of popcorn that had been in his lap flying. Bruce winced guiltily. He didn’t think he’d been moving that quietly—thought that Dick had probably heard him coming and had just been ignoring him like he often did—but evidently he’d startled the boy. They’d need to work on that. Learning to listen from multiple directions at once. To never become so absorbed in something, you stopped paying attention to your peripherals. But that was a lesson for later. For Robin. Not Dick Grayson, who was up past his bedtime.

Dick, who in an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness, fumbled to catch the bowl, grasping for the remote with his other hand as he muted the television at the end of his bed. He shot Bruce a quick, guilty glance over his shoulder before looking away again. As predicted, his response was swift and clever.

“I am in bed.”

Which Bruce had to concede was technically accurate. The boy was bundled up against the headboard in a nest of blankets and pillows, now covered in popcorn. But getting by on a technicality wasn’t going to cut it this time. “Then you should be asleep,” he amended, pushing the door open and stepping further into the room.

“I can’t,” Dick sniffed, scrubbing a hand over his face.

His voice sounded audibly choked, and Bruce frowned, wondering if he was getting the same cold as Alfred. When Dick still refused to look at him, he turned to survey the room instead, taking in the surrounding chaos. It’d taken the boy a while to relax and make himself at home. It wasn’t until he’d figured out that Bruce was Batman and started training with him as Robin a few scant months ago that he’d made this room his own.

Which evidently meant strewing everything he owned everywhere.

Other people’s mess and clutter usually stressed Bruce out, but it filled him with a weird sense of relief to see socks and miscellaneous other items scattered across the floor. Normal and lived in—like a child’s bedroom should look. He turned to look back at Dick, a minor reproach about learning to use the laundry hamper dying on his lips as the boy sneaked a glance at him and Bruce realized the devastating truth of why Dick wouldn't look at him.

Dick had been crying.

Alone. In the dark.

And Bruce had been coming up here to yell at him.

Bruce was going to vomit.

How often had he sat alone up here doing the exact same thing at Dick’s age, both before and after his parents’ deaths? Oh, Bruce knew his parents had loved him. But they hadn’t exactly been present. They hadn’t needed to be. Not with a household of staff and tutors to keep him busy. Not when they had so much work to do. So many social engagements to attend.

Even as a child, Bruce had understood his parents were too public to fully belong to him. It’d made the stolen moments of just them, just the three of them, seem so much more special. But that hadn’t kept him from sitting up late at night, waiting for them to come home from some party or other—listening for the crunch of the car tires on the gravel driveway and their hushed, tipsy laughter as they made their way up the stairs.

Some nights, they didn’t come home at all, opting to stay wherever the party was. Those had always been the worst. As an adult, he knew now it had been less about hedonism and more about his father’s pursuit of political advancement, but that knowledge didn’t erase the hurt he’d felt as a child. How alone he’d felt, even before he knew the true meaning of the word. How often he'd cried about it.

He swallowed, still staring at Dick’s tear-streaked face.

I’m doing the same thing. The realization hit him like a gut punch, followed by, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, as a chasm of shaky panic as wide and fraught as Gotham’s crumbling rooftops opened up in the pit of his stomach.

What the fuck had he been thinking when he took Dick in?

What misguided impulse led him to believe that he could care for a child?

And what the fuck should he be doing right now?

Should he go get Alfred? Alfred knew what to do with young, orphaned boys who stayed up too late watching reruns on television with tears streaming down their faces. At least he’d always seemed to know what he was doing. But that would mean waking the other man from his much-needed rest, and Bruce would rather gnaw off his own arm than disturb him just because he was a colossal fuckup of an adult who didn’t know what to do with a crying child. So what should he do? Ask Dick what was wrong? No, that was too obvious, and from the way Dick had been trying to hide it, he didn’t want Bruce to comment on it, either.

God, how had Bruce missed this? He’d thought Dick was doing so well, thought his smiles and laughter meant he was fine. It’d never occurred to him that the sunny, happy boy who swung from the chandeliers and climbed Batman’s shoulders like a jungle gym might hide away in his room to cry alone at night.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He was such a fucking failure—no, focus.

Bruce shook himself mentally and recalibrated his thoughts, locking his guilt into a box to be dealt with never later. This wasn’t about him. Forget what he’d been failing to do. What should he be doing now? What would Alfred do? Make tea? Ask if he wanted a hug? Offer sage but perplexing wisdom that would only make sense in about ten years?

“You’re doing the face,” Dick informed him.

Bruce blinked. “What face?”

Dick raised his index fingers to either side of his head in a rough imitation of the cowl, his mouth turning down into a dour frown. “I’m Batman.”

He didn’t have the bass to pull it off, not yet. Still, the rasp wasn’t a half bad impression of him. Bruce snorted, raking a hand through his hair.

There was nothing quite like being openly mocked by a literal child to simultaneously pull you out of your panic and also put you in your place.

His eye caught the glow of the television and lingered there. “So,” he said after an uncomfortable stretch of silence. “The Muppets?”

Something like relief passed over Dick’s face as he turned back to the muted television, his features cast into glowing technicolor. It made the tear tracks on his face stand out even more. “Yeah. I, uh, I found a box set in the living room when I was exploring earlier.” He glanced quickly at Bruce. “Sorry if that’s not okay. Alfred said you wouldn’t mind.”

Bruce waved him off.

The boy had access to one of the most powerful computers in the world, hidden in Bruce’s basement. A forgotten Muppets box set gathering dust in the living room, which he barely used, was fair game. Bruce took a hesitant step out of the shadows toward the splay of rainbow light dancing across the floor between them and picked up one of the old VHS tapes scattered across the foot of the bed. Frankly, he was surprised they still worked, not to mention the television. It was the old one from his childhood bedroom, he realized. He could see the faded Gray Ghost stickers he’d stuck to the side. Alfred must have brought it down from the attic for him. The butler threw nothing away so long as it was still working.

He flipped the VHS case over, eyes tracking over the colorful art. Bruce couldn’t recall, but he thought the box set might have originally belonged to his cousin Kate. He had vague memories of sitting in the Kane household watching the show with his cousins as snow fell outside. At least, he thought it was the Kane household. Everything was so vague from back then. Locked away behind the echo of gunshot ricocheting through his head.

Bruce forced himself to breathe normally as he looked back at Dick.

“Do you… like the Muppets?” he asked stiltedly, feeling ridiculous but not knowing what else to say.

Dick shrugged. “Sure, everyone loves the Muppets. Don’t they?”

Bruce inclined his head. “Probably. Though people with pupaphobia might disagree.”

“Pupa-what?”

Bruce smiled at the perplexed inflection in his voice. Dick was always complaining that he used too-complicated words. Alfred had gifted him a dictionary a few weeks into his stay—an apparent necessity for conversing with Bruce.

“Pupaphobia,” he explained. “It’s an irrational fear of puppets. It’s fairly common, though not as common as coulrophobia.” He glanced sideways at Dick, anticipating the follow-up question. “That’s an irrational fear of clowns.”

“Huh.” Dick clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, expression thoughtful. “Y’know, I never understood why people got freaked out by clowns.” He flashed Bruce one of those gleaming grins that apparently held more hurt than Bruce had ever realized. “But I guess it makes sense if you’re from Gotham.”

Bruce grunted and sat down on the edge of the bed, brushing aside spilled popcorn. He didn’t want to think about the Joker right now. Not when the clown was safely tucked away in Arkham, hopefully for good this time. He returned to the television, where another musical number seemed to have broken out.

A dog in a straw boating hat was performing what appeared to be a one-dog barbershop quartet. He tried to remember its name. Roofy? Rowlfy? Something like that. He'd never bothered to learn. Bruce had always preferred Kermit. There’d been something so relatable about the frog’s crumpled-faced frustration, even as a child. 

As though wading through a dream, Bruce recalled almost laughing himself sick at an episode of Sesame Street when the frog had been trying to get the Cookie Monster to guess what was inside a mystery box. The blue furry monster kept guessing ‘cookie’ even though Kermit was practically giving him the answer (an orange). He’d laughed so hard at Kermit’s rageful flailing that his mother had to pick him up off the floor and pat him on the back until the hiccupping stopped. If he focused, he could almost smell the sweet, powdery scent of her perfume… 

He blinked, bringing the screen back into focus. “What do you like about them?” he asked, feeling rather than seeing Dick’s expressive shrug. 

“Same thing I liked about the circus. It’s colorful and happy. It makes people laugh.”

Bruce tried not to read into that statement and the implied, unlike here, lingering underneath. The manor was neither colorful nor happy, and it certainly wasn’t filled with laughter. It hadn’t been in a long time. “So, it feels like home,” he said aloud, chancing a sideways look at Dick and regretting it instantly when the boy’s expression fell again.

“Yeah. I guess.”

Bruce didn’t know what to do with his shuttered version of him. Dick was always so animated, always smiling, constantly prodding Bruce to get him to do the same. Seeing him like this, hunched over and still, it felt unnatural. Too much like Bruce.

Say something, his brain screamed, anything to fill the awful silence, but as usual, Dick beat him to it. “We didn’t get live TV much on the road,” he said, “but whenever we got to a big enough city to get signal, my mom would—” He trailed off again, voice wobbling. Bruce felt his heart clench. The boy shook himself visibly, plastering a smile onto his face that made him look simultaneously too old and too young all at once. Bruce hated it. He hated that Dick was pretending to be all right for his sake, because he didn’t know how to pretend for him. “Anyway. I just… I wanted to see if it was the same as I remembered it.”

Bruce hesitated. “Is it?”

This time, Dick remained silent. Bruce didn’t pry further. He knew all too well what it was like to look at a world you thought you once knew, only to find all the color had bled out of it. After another moment, Dick said, “The show’s older than I thought.”

Bruce quirked an eyebrow at that. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” He reached over and plucked the case from Bruce’s unresisting fingers. “I thought they were new when I saw them, but see, it says here, anniversary edition, re-released in 1985. That’s like forever ago.”

Bruce picked up one of the many pillows on the bed and gently bopped Dick on the head. “I’ll have you know that’s the year I was born.”

Dick made a startled sound and batted the pillow away. He scrunched his nose up, eyes sparking to life with mischief. “Exactly! It’s ancient. I mean, who has VHS tapes anymore? Everything’s on DVD. Alfred had to show me how to use this thing.”

Bruce grumbled and bopped him on the head again, a hesitant smile tugging at his mouth when Dick laughed. It was a watery, weak thing, but it still felt like a victory.

Abruptly, downstairs in the foyer, the grandfather clock tolled the hour, the booming brass tones echoing through the silent house. Three am. Christ, Bruce was an awful father legal guardian. Dick would need to get up for school in a few hours, and from the miserable look on the boy’s face, he knew it, too. Bruce was firm about that. Schooling was important, not just from an academic standpoint, but because it was normal and Dick needed normalcy. He needed to be around his peers. All the child psychology books Bruce had hastily read said as much. But as he looked back at Dick’s suddenly downturned face and the exhausted bags under his eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to suggest that the boy turn off the TV and go to sleep.

Because Bruce knew, didn’t he? He knew the special sort of hell it was for everyone around you to act like everything was normal when it felt like nothing would ever be normal ever again.

“If I turn this off, are you going to go to sleep?” he asked, not reproachful, not leading or patronizing, just an honest question.

Dick squinted up at him, biting his lip, then shook his head.

Bruce nodded. “All right.” Slinging off his suit jacket, he kicked his dress shoes off and motioned for Dick to move over. “Scoot. Make some room for these old bones. Seen as how I’m so ancient.”

“What are you doing?” Dick asked, but hurried to comply as Bruce leaned back against the headboard, his pilfered pillow at his back.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked, loosening his tie as he picked up the remote and aimed it at the screen. He hit the volume button, returning the show to jangling life. “I’m watching the Muppets.”

He could feel Dick watching him out of the corner of his eye. “What about school?” he asked, tone wary.

Bruce shrugged. It was Friday tomorrow; they could make this work. Just this once. “Nasty cold going around,” he said lightly, glancing sideways at his young ward. “It’d be inconsiderate to the other children to send you to school when the entire house is sick.”

Dick arched an eyebrow at him. “The entire house?”

Bruce shrugged again. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d played hooky from his role as CEO to stay home and do something more important. Whether it was chasing up leads on a case, recovering from an injury, or, in this instance, staying up all night to watch the Muppets, so the nine-year-old in his care didn’t feel so alone. He couldn’t do much when it came to easing Dick’s grief, but he could do this. He could be present.

Dick continued to watch him skeptically for several moments, then seemed to decide there wasn’t a catch after all, and settled back down to watch the show.

A comfortable silence ensued as a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors washed over them in the dark. Bruce let his eyes unfocus on the screen as his brain wound down, lulled by the gentle familiarity of it all. Occasionally, someone would huff with laughter, and Bruce was surprised to find that sometimes it was him. After a while, he noticed a light pressure against his shoulder. He looked down to find Dick slumped against him, eyes closed, breath slow and even in the rhythm of sleep.

He should get up now, he realized. Turn the TV off and let Dick sleep properly. If he was lucky, he could get a few hours of work done down in the cave before his brain completely liquified. Yes, he should do that.

So why couldn’t he get his limbs to work?

Five more minutes. Bruce would give it five more minutes to make sure Dick was fully asleep, and then he’d make his exit. Or maybe he’d wait for the tape to run out. There couldn’t be much left. How long was a Muppets episode, anyway? Thirty minutes? He could wait that long. After all, it wasn’t like he was going to fall asleep —

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Alfred’s polite, wry voice floated through the upper layers of Bruce’s consciousness. “The time is seven-thirty am. Time to get up.”

Bruce blinked into wakefulness, his gaze flicking around the room in hazy confusion before fixing on the butler who was striding toward the window. He had just enough time to throw an arm over his face before the curtains were pulled back, plunging the room into awful, terrible, horrible brightness.

Beside him, Dick groaned and burrowed deeper under the covers. “Five more minutes…” he pleaded.

Five more hours, Bruce thought. Jesus Christ, this room was a furnace. How did Dick stand it? Was this why they kept finding him sleeping on the ledge outside his window? He glanced sideways, noting Dick's flushed complexion. Bruce would need to fix this. Sleeping in a room this warm couldn't be good for him.

“Come now, Master Richard,” Alfred admonished, sounding like he was moving around the room, straightening some of the mess as he went. “You’re going to be late for school if you tarry much longer. You, too, Master Bruce. Up and at ‘em, as they say.”

“He’s sick,” Bruce muttered, rubbing at his eyes until purple splotches appeared behind his eyelids. When he cracked open an eye, it was to find Alfred watching them, his face as inscrutable as ever.

“Sick?”

On cue, Dick gave a feeble cough. Alfred arched an imperious eyebrow at them. “And you, Master Bruce?”

“He’s sick too,” Dick said, rubbing his eyes like he couldn't get them to clear.

Alfred’s other eyebrow rose to join the first. “Indeed?”

“Yes,” Bruce rasped, not having to feign the hoarseness in his voice.

His fortune, his entire fortune, for an IV of strong black tea with twelve sugars injected directly into his veins.

Christ, was this what getting more than forty minutes of sleep at a time felt like? Absolutely horrific. No wonder he’d stopped doing it.

Alfred’s eyebrows rose so high they were at risk of vanishing into his gently receding hairline. “Dear me, it must be serious if you’re admitting infirmity, Master Bruce. Shall I call for an undertaker?”

Dick snickered. Bruce glowered. From the amused twitch of Alfred’s mouth, it was not as intimidating as he’d hoped. “No, thank you, Alfred. But if you could be persuaded to put the kettle on…”

“Very well, Master Bruce. Though I doubt it will fit me.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. He was too sleep-deprived/over-rested for jokes like that right now. “Alfred…”

“Goodness, not even a glare for that one. I fear you’re right, Master Dick. He really might be ailing. And here I was thinking you’d merely stayed up all night watching cartoons and were suffering the consequences of your actions.”

“Puppets,” Bruce corrected, finally hauling himself upright and scrubbing both hands over his face.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“The Muppets are puppets, not cartoons.”

Alfred’s mouth twitched. “Ah, an important distinction. My mistake. Shall I clear your schedules, Master Bruce? Given the severity of your joint maladies.”

Bruce gave him a level look through the splay of his fingers. Alfred’s mouth twitched again. The old butler was enjoying this far too much. “Thank you, Alfred, that would be best.”

Alfred inclined his head, already heading toward the door. “Very good, sir. I shall make the relevant phone calls. Breakfast will be ready shortly.” He paused, speaking over his shoulder. “I trust we are all well enough to manage drop scones.”

As the butler left, Dick sat up, nose wrinkled in confusion. “Why is he dropping biscuits?”

Bruce huffed with laughter. “He means pancakes.”

“Oh.” Dick brightened considerably. “Then why didn’t he say that?”

“He did,” Bruce answered, listening to the steady tread of Alfred’s footsteps as he reached the stairs. “In his way. And don’t let Alfred hear you calling scones biscuits. You’ll never hear the end of it.”

“But they are,” the boy insisted.

“I have it on good authority that they are not.”

Dick wrinkled his nose again. “You mean Alfred?”

Bruce arched an eyebrow at him. “Is there any higher authority?”

Dick thought about it, then seemed to concede the point with a slight jog of his head. A beat of silence followed. Dick opened his mouth, then bit his lip. Eventually, he said, “Thank you.”

Bruce frowned. He still wasn’t awake enough for this. “For what?”

The boy shrugged lopsidedly. “For not being mad. For staying. You didn’t have to stay.”

I didn’t mean to, Bruce thought treacherously, biting his tongue to keep from saying it aloud. Instead, he said, “Of course.” As though he’d meant it. As though he always would. “Where else would I go?”

Dick shrugged again. “The cave. That’s where you usually are when I’m getting ready for school.”

Bruce grunted at that. The boy had him bang to rights, as Alfred would say. He’d need to work on that. Starting now. He wouldn’t be perfect, he knew. But he could try to do better. For Dick’s sake.

“So, what do you want to do today?” Bruce asked, then added, “Bearing in mind, we are both supposed to be sick, and being seen as the zoo by paparazzi is probably a bad idea.”

“Eat dropped biscuits,” Dick replied promptly.

Bruce covered his mouth to hide his smile and silently despaired on Alfred’s behalf. “Then what?”

“I dunno. Train? Do casework? Swing off the chandeliers—I’m kidding! Kidding!” He held up his hands placatingly at the look on Bruce’s face. “Jeeze,” he muttered. “It was one time.”

“Once is enough,” Bruce replied sternly, though unable to keep the smile from his face. It’d been an impressive, if heart-stopping feat. He’d give the boy that much.

“What do you want to do?” Dick asked.

Bruce blinked. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

Bruce thought about it. He had a million things he needed to do. Casework galore, blueprints for the new armor that needed looking over—his actual work at Wayne Enterprises. But what did he want to do?

His gaze unfocused out the window, where the faint outline of a rainbow was visible through the clouds. A splash of color in an otherwise bleak world. He stared at it, feeling the balance of the gears in his brain shift. He turned back to the boy beside him. “Have you ever seen Muppet Treasure Island?”

Dick’s answering grin was hesitant but blinding in its hope. "Really?"

"Yeah, sure," Bruce said, motioning him forward. "We can open up the viewing room downstairs and do a marathon. Anything you like—within reason," he hastily added. He didn't want another row from Alfred for letting the boy watch true crime documentaries.

"Cool!" Dick exclaimed as he bounced past Bruce toward the bathroom at the end of the hallway. "Last one downstairs is a rotten egg!"

Bruce shook his head, following after him toward his own room at a more sedate pace. He needed to shower and get out of his gala attire. Perhaps then the gritty feeling behind his eyes would go away. And hopefully the razor blades he'd somehow swallowed in his sleep…

Jesus Christ, he hadn't felt this awful since that time he'd fallen into Gotham harbor and gotten the flu…

Bruce halted in his tracks. "Aw, f—"

Chapter Text

"Welcome back, Mister Wayne," his chief coordinator, Carol, greeted him as he exited the elevator from the garage into the main lobby of Wayne Tower.

Bruce tucked his sunglasses into the breast pocket of his suit and greeted her with a friendly half salute, half wave. "Thanks, Carol. Glad to be back." Despite the cheery, signature Brucie grin, he couldn't quite hide the residual hoarseness in his voice.

Carol drew up short, wrinkling her nose. "Still under the weather?" she asked with surprising familiarity.

Bruce blinked. That was new. Normally, she didn't respond to any sign of ailment from him. Just offered cool, casual professionalism, even when Bruce showed up with two black eyes and a broken nose that one time. The last thing he expected her to comment on was a cold.

Bruce recovered his surprise and flashed her a rueful smile. "Is it that obvious?"

"The bags under your eyes are a dead giveaway," she replied dryly, falling into step beside him as she led him through the lobby toward the elevators.

He forced a laugh out past the rawness in his throat. "So much for that new concealer from Janus Cosmetics," he joked.

Carol made an amused noise, already leafing through the ledger she'd brought with her. Bruce eyed it warily. It was going to be a hell of a day if they were preparing to brief him on the elevator ride up to his office before someone had even brought a coffee to his desk.

"Well, you know what they say about the Gotham weather. Once it's in your lungs, it's in there, especially in kids. How is he, by the way?" she asked, then seeing his confused expression, clarified. "Richard."

"Oh. Uh, still sick," Bruce replied, clearing his throat as subtly as he could behind his closed fist.

He wasn't sick anymore, or at least, not contageous. Not after spending the entirety of last week rotating between the couch, his bed, and ingesting his body weight in Nyquil and Alfred's chicken noodle soup. The same could, unfortunately, not be said for Dick.

"The cold got into his chest," he expanded when Carol continued to look at him, clearly expecting more. "So now it's bronchitis. The doctor said to keep him off school until next week. Just in case."

"Ouch." Carol winced in sympathy.

Bruce nodded, gaze momentarily turning inward as he thought back over the last week.

It hadn't seemed too bad at first. Dick had mostly just been a bit flushed and grumpy. Complaining between sniffles about being bored. Bruce, by contrast, had been a wreck those first two days: unable to lie flat without drowning in his own mucus, every inch of his body aching like he'd been beaten with a hot fire iron. It was like those precious few hours of sleep had signalled to his body it was time to cash in all the checks he'd been writing against his future self, and the careful balance of sleep deprivation and functionality he routinely toed along had collapsed and taken his immune system with it.

By the third day, he'd felt well enough to try and alleviate Dick's boredom, which tended to manifest in terrifying, chandelier-endangering displays of acrobatics if allowed to go unchecked for too long. But to his surprise, Dick hadn't wanted to get out of bed. Bruce had reached out to press a hand to Dick's forehead because he knew vaguely that was what you were supposed to do, then promptly drew it back as though scalded.

Dick had been warm, far, far too warm.

Bruce had panicked and called Leslie before he'd even finished shouting for Alfred.

Both the doctor and butler had tried to assure Bruce it was just a fever. That Dick would be fine with fluids and rest, but some latent, primordial terror Bruce didn't even know existed within him had awoken, and he couldn't seem to let it go. He'd caught himself counting the seconds between Dick's coughing and how long it took him to recover, cataloguing every rattling inhale and comparing it to the last in case anything had changed.

As though a fever was something he could solve with enough data.

With hindsight, it had been a total overreaction on his part.

Children got coughs and colds all the time and were fine, and Dick was no ordinary child. He was Robin. He quite literally laughed in the face of danger; hell, he somersaulted over it while making fun of it. He was a robust, healthy little boy. Bruce would never have let him be Robin if he wasn't. But damned if Bruce could get his nervous system to internalize this and stop jumping at every cough and sickly groan. Gradually, things had improved, and Dick perked up—at least enough to complain about being bored again. Bruce had indulged him by letting him turn the viewing room downstairs (or as Dick had called it, "a freaking whole-ass cinema in his house.") into a giant pillow fort, bundling the pair of them up under a mountain of blankets as they settled in to watch what felt like every animated movie made over the last ten years in four days.

Bruce hadn't heard of the Madagascar movies until last week. But it would be too soon if he never saw that fucking singing zebra ever again.

And then the office had called last night, tentatively asking if Bruce would be in to discuss details of the proposed business deal with Drake Industries, and Bruce had felt the real world catch up with him again. He'd already been out of action for a week as both Brucie Wayne and Batman. He couldn't delay either any further. But knowing this didn't make it any easier to tear himself away from the little bubble of comfort they'd built.

Which was ridiculous.

His entire emotional response to this whole incident was ridiculous.

There was no safer place for Dick to recover than at home in the manor under Alfred's care. He didn't need Bruce hovering over him like a giant bat-shaped mother hen. He'd probably already used Bruce's absence to talk Alfred into letting him eat ice cream before lunch and was watching movies in the viewing room downstairs. Again. He was fine. Everything was fine.

So why did Bruce feel like he was missing a limb?

"It's always hard to leave them when they're sick," Carol said, her expression so knowingly kind it made Bruce feel like a bug being pinned down into a lightbox for examination. Was he really that transparent right now? Maybe he was still sick…

"Got a steam machine yet?" she asked suddenly, seemingly apropos of nothing.

"Pardon?"

"You know," Carol said, as though Bruce had any idea what she was talking about. "A steam machine. One of those little face ones, or heck, just a steam humidifier for his room. We couldn't live without ours when my kids were his age. Absolute life saver helping them get to sleep at night when their lungs are full of crud."

Bruce blinked. Okay, this was really new. Carol never talked about her home life at work. And Bruce would know, she'd been his chief co-ordinator for five years. Bruce didn't even know her kids' names. Was this… Wait. Had she upgraded him to parent in her head, and this was her new way of talking to him? Was this how parents talked to each other?

Was… was part of his Brucie persona now also being thought of as a dad?

Oh God, Bruce didn't know how to feel about that.

"I…" he said, not sure where to go with this turn of events. He swallowed, mentally shaking himself. Focus, you're the god damn Batman. You can handle anything. Except apparently Dick having a bad cold. Or this. "That sounds like a good idea."

And it did, really. Far better than Alfred trying to keep the bathroom full of steam for him. Bruce would have some sent to the house as soon as he got a minute. It couldn't hurt.

The elevator doors slid open with a ding, and the pair stepped inside.

"All right," he said, shaking himself out and reaching for the sheet of paperwork she was already holding out to him. "Let's get back on top of things."

*

"—wants to know if you'll be up for The Gotham Tonight?"

Bruce paused reading the report in front of him and zoned back in on what Marty, the head of PR, was saying to him. "The what, sorry?"

The other man gave him a patient, strained smile.

Bruce was used to that from him. Anyone who handled Brucie's public image had to have the patience of a saint, and Marty, with his clipboard and his Bluetooth earpiece perpetually attached to his ear, was no exception. "You had an invitation to appear on The Gotham Tonight show this Friday. They're hosting a fundraiser for the Green Spaces Eco-Conservation Society, the one we donated to—"

"Last year," Bruce finished for him, recalling the last time he'd been on the show.

He'd sat on the couch, grinning like a fool as Murray asked what Bruce was up to in Gotham (charity, drinking, dating), then been gently 'bullied' into handling a baby leopard cub (much to the delight of the audience), which had promptly escaped his grasp to climb up his arm like a tree and take up residency on his shoulder, gnawing gently on his ear while the handler talked about the importance of preserving wildlife spaces.

After being 'rescued' from the inquisitive cub, Bruce had made a show of being relieved and made a sizable donation to the charity, as well as the promise to match whatever else was raised. It had been good for their image, and Bruce had got to hold an adorable leopard cub, so, quite frankly, it had been one of his more pleasant public appearances.

It was short notice, but… Bruce hadn't been out in public in a while. Not since he'd taken Dick in. It would be good to re-establish his image as Gotham's charitable, playboy-ditz-in-residence.

"Yeah, sure," he said breezily, flashing Marty one of his carefree smiles. "That's always fun. Let's do that."

Marty inclined his head. "I'll make sure you get the details about the schedule and the other guests. Now, if we could look at your upcoming appearance at Gotham U's Business School…"

Bruce sighed and put his attentive face on. This was going to be a long week.

*

Tonight was not going well, Bruce reflected as he was flung bodily through the window of the building he'd followed Black Mask's men into. He connected hard with the grimy wall of the alleyway in a shower of glass, further knocking the air from his bruised lungs. Normally he'd be more on top of his game than this, but after getting back into the swing of things a scant few days ago only to immediately get dosed with fear toxin and then spend the last two nights chasing down the location of an arms deal on top of his usual crime fighting, Bruce was running on empty.

It didn't help that he'd taken a crowbar to the ribs the moment he'd set foot inside the building. He'd give Sionis his due; he'd improved the competency of his henchmen since Bruce last sent him to Blackgate.

"Agent A to Batman, you have incoming—" Alfred's voice filtered in and out of his awareness with a burst of static. Bruce staggered upright, pressing a hand to his ear to try and engage the communicator again. But nothing. The signal was dead.

Shit.

The sound of a metal door clanging open heralded the arrival of Black Mask's goons, and Bruce drew himself up to his full height, preparing to square off. His saving grace right now was that the alley was too narrow to safely fire a gun—not without risking ricochet—something which the hoods surrounding him seemed smart enough to recognize. Sionis really had upgraded his hiring protocols.

Instead, they lunged at him with fists and heavy melee weapons that promised bone-crunching pain if they connected. Bruce beat them back, using his greater bulk to slam them into walls and snap bones when he found a viable opening.

But it was still twelve against one.

"Batman! Behind you!"

Bruce turned in time to see a goon coming up behind him—make that thirteen against one—only for his would-be assailant to go sailing sideways fast, followed by a flash of red, yellow and green as Robin swung out of the skyline into the narrow alleyway and kicked him squarely in the head.

He glowered at his protege. "You're supposed to be in bed."

Hardened criminals had been known to piss themselves at the sound of Batman's low, guttural growl and several of the advancing hoods in front of him faltered in their approach, turning to look at each other uncertainly.

Robin, still standing atop the man he'd downed, flashed him a cheery grin, pounding his green gloved fist into the palm of his other one. "Yeah, yeah. You can grumble later. Right now we've got some butt to kick!"

Bruce couldn't help it: a vicious grin flashed over his face as the two turned, moving in tandem. Here the narrow confines of the alley served them better than their foes, allowing Bruce to bulldoze his way through the ranks, and for Dick to gain additional height, using Bruce's shoulders as a jumping off point to swing himself up onto the fire escape and leap effortlessly through the air, kicking and punching from up high with comendable accuracy. He springboarded off the face of one man who'd been fool enough to try and grab him, throwing him off balance and directly into Bruce's path before vaulting on to the next.

Soon the pair found themselves the last two standing, surrounded by a heap of groaning henchmen in various states of unconciousness.

"The dynamic duo triumph again!" Robin struck a heroic pose, his yellow cape flaring out behind him.

It was promptly ruined by the boy doubling over with a deep, wheezing cough.

"Hmm," Bruce hummed, reaching down to zip tie the henchmen together into a nice little immobilized pile for the GCPD to pick up. He'd pressed the alert button in his gauntlet the moment the fight ended. Gordon would be here soon. "And that's why you're supposed to be in bed."

"Aw, c'mon!" Dick protested, "I spent all week at home. And you needed help. Your communicator is fried, and you were already limping before you went in there."

Bruce arched an eyebrow at him, even though he wouldn't be able to see it under the cowl. "And just how do you know that?"

Dick nodded upwards, and Bruce followed his line of sight to the CCTV camera poised on top of the flickering street lamp.

They'd been watching him through the city feeds. Wonderful.

Bruce sighed and zip-tied another henchman to another henchman. "That doesn't explain what you're doing here. Agent A had orders to watch you."

"He was watching me," Dick chirped back. One of the hoods groaned into wakefulness beside him, and the boy promptly turned and hit him with a nerve pinch to the neck, dropping him to the ground again. "He was watching me in the cave. And then he watched me leave the cave very, very quickly."

"Uhu," Bruce said, taking the time to frisk down one of the goons now that they were restrained and finding something that looked promising: a matchbook with the details of what appeared to be an underground club scrawled on the inside. He slipped it into his utility belt. Hopefully, this would lead him to whatever den of iniquity Sionis had holed himself up in. "And you ran all the way here in time to help me?"

Dick scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. I took the Batmobile."

Bruce stared at him. "The what?"

"The Batmobile," Dick said, miming driving behind a steering wheel as though Bruce was being silly. "Y'know, the car you drive?"

Bruce stared some more. "That's not what it's called. And what do you mean you drove here? You're barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel."

"I can see enough! It was real easy following your tracker on the map. I just had to look out for people. And what else should I call it?"

"The car," Bruce responded, pulling out his grapple gun and holding an arm out to Dick.

"Pft, lame," the boy responded, slotting himself against Bruce's side under the cape and letting himself be hoisted up until he was wrapped around Bruce's torso like a koala. "The Batmobile is a much better name."

"Uhu," Bruce said, tightening his arm around Dick as he fired the grapple gun, launching them both into the air. Next, he'd be calling the computer in the cave the 'batcomputer.'

The pair sailed up into the air, the cold Gotham night whipping around them.

"Where are we going now?" Dick asked.

"Home," Bruce replied flatly.

"Aw, c'mon…"

Bruce tilted his head to look down into the green domino mask covering Dick's eyes. "Home," he repeated.

"Ugh, fine," the boy groused, burrowing closer to Bruce under Batman's cloak. "You're no fun."

His hands brushed the exposed sliver of skin on Bruce's neck, and even through the green gloves, Bruce could feel how chilled he was. He secured his cloak more firmly around him once they landed on the rooftop, trying to protect Dick further from the cold night air. They'd need to dunk him in a bath to thaw him out before putting him to bed, Bruce realized. And an extra dose of that cold medicine Leslie had given them wouldn't go amiss either.

He started toward the edge of the rooftop again, grapple gun deploying just as the red and blue lights of the GCPD came flashing into existence beneath them. He caught Gordon looking up just as he leaped from the ledge, and nodded. Gordon would likely want to compare notes, but Batman had more important things to do right now. He'd catch up with him later.

Dick peeked up at him from under the cloak. "Can we watch The Muppets before bed?"

"No," Bruce replied, scanning the nearby lanes for where the nine-year-old might have parked the car. Jesus Christ, what a sentence. He spotted it two buildings over, the looming bulk of it hidden behind some overflowing dumpsters. He corrected the course of the grapple line, guiding them toward it, then added softly, "Maybe…"

Dick made a happy sound and burrowed back under the cloak.

If anyone looked out a window right now and happened to see the Batman smiling, Bruce consoled himself with the knowledge that no one would believe them…

*

A neatly typed missive was thrust under Bruce's nose at the breakfast table.

"What is this?" he asked, blearily lifting his eyes from the coffee cup he'd been nursing like his life depended on it.

"Martin from PR had it sent over this morning. I believe it's the details for tonight's television appearance on the Gotham Tonight Show," Alfred replied, busying himself with preparing breakfast for Dick. The sound of pancake batter sizzling as it hit the griddle filled the space.

Bruce groaned. He'd forgotten about the TV appearance. He glanced at his reflection in the warped, stainless steel exterior of the coffee pot in front of him. At least he'd managed to avoid taking any hits to the face last night, even if his ribs felt like, well, like he'd been hit with a crowbar.

He glanced down at the paper, familiarizing himself with the schedule. It all looked about what he remembered from last time. There was one line of text, however, that jumped out at him.

"Guest starring, Bruce Wayne and… The Muppets?" he glanced up at Alfred. "Muppets? What are the Muppets doing on The Gotham Tonight Show"

"Ah," Alfred said, turning to face him as he flipped a pancake expertly through the air. "There, I believe I can help. There's a new film coming out. It's all Master Dick has been talking about this week while you've been at the office. I believe it's called 'The Muppets Take Metropolis,' or something to that effect. It looked quite humorous in the previews."

"Huh," Bruce said. He hadn't been aware that the Jim Henson company was still making anything aside from Sesame Street, and even there, he knew the funding was dwindling. He reached for his phone and pulled up the last text conversation he'd been having.

«Are you aware your city is being overtaken by The Muppets?»

Surprising no one, Clark texted back right away. He was probably standing in line at some little stall getting donuts for everyone at the Daily Planet. «Ha! 😅😅😅 Yeah. Kind of hard to miss. There are billboards everywhere. The DP entertainment section is running a piece on it tonight. Why do you ask?»

Well, wasn't that handy?

«Can you get me the piece?» Bruce tapped back.

«Uh… sure?»

Bruce watched as Clark continued to type out something else, the line of ellipses at the bottom of the screen denoting that a lot of backspacing and rewording was happening.

«Why?» he eventually asked, and Bruce snorted at the simplicity of it after waiting almost a full minute of watching him type.

«Because I'm going to be on television with them tonight, and I have no idea what it's about.»

«OH! You're doing Gotham Tonight?! We'll need to tune at HQ 😂»

«Do. Not.» Bruce typed back, but he knew it would be too much to hope for that Clark or anyone else would listen to him.

The Justice League, as thankful as they were for his funding and tentative as they were as allies, enjoyed watching him humilate himself with his Brucie personna far too much. He knew Hal Jordan still refused to believe they were the same person despite Bruce literally taking his cowl off in front of him and telling him who he was.

Another notification went off on his phone, this time from his email app, and sure enough Clark had sent him the article from The Daily Planet's entertainment section.

«Thank you.»

«Don't mention it. Try to have fun tonight. It's not often you get to meet The Muppets!»

Bruce didn't bother to dignify that with an answer, and Clark likely didn't expect him to. Instead, he flipped open the article and began to read. He paused briefly to let Clark know there was a spelling mistake on the forty-seventh line, then went back to reading. Somehow, against all the odds, the Henson company had talked Lex Luthor into letting them use LexCorp tower to stage a heist. Bruce could honestly say he was surprised. The other billionaire was normally so precious about being taken seriously, he didn't stoop to PR stunts like this.

He wondered what awful thing was about to come to light that the tech mogul was trying to hide.

"Watcha reading?" a small voice asked at his elbow.

"An article Clark sent over," Bruce replied, proud that he hadn't jumped nor flung his phone in surprise at Dick's sudden and very silent arrival.

On the one hand, it was good he was taking to his stealth lessons so readily, on the other hand, Jesus Christ, his heart…

"What's it about?" the boy asked as he hopped up onto the vacant chair beside Bruce and flashed a grin at Alfred who piled a small mountain of buckwheat pancakes onto his plate.

"The Muppets," Bruce replied, setting his phone down and returning to his coffee.

He was trying not to do work at the table anymore when Dick was there. Emphasis on try.

"The Muppets?" Dick asked around a mouthful of syrup-covered pancake, quickly covering his mouth with his hand when Alfred made a stern noise behind them. He swallowed hastily and reached for the glass of orange juice the butler had just put down in front of him. "Why is Uncle Clark writing about The Muppets?"

"He's not," Bruce replied, forcing himself to let the 'uncle' go uncommented on.

Robin had met Superman a scant month ago when Superman had shown up unannounced in Gotham—much to Bruce's annoyance. The pair had bonded almost instantly on that crumbling rooftop, once Clark got over his surprise at seeing a literal child hiding under the dark swath of Bruce's cape. It was hard for them not to get along. They were so alike with their cheerfulness and tendency toward bright colors and sunny optimism.

Bruce felt like a gargoyle standing beside them.

He still wasn't happy that the Justice League now knew he had a kid about Robin, but he supposed it was unavoidable at this point. Even the local media were starting to talk about Batman's brightly colored, terrifyingly competent little sidekick.

"Then why—"

"I'm going on television tonight, as Brucie," Bruce explained, reaching over the table and stealing a slice of bacon from Dick's plate.

"Oh! Yeah! The animal thing," Dick said, clearly remembering some of what Bruce had told him at the start of the week when he told him about it. His frown returned. "What's that got to do with The Muppets?"

"They're going to be on the show," Bruce replied, reaching for his coffee cup. "Something about the new movie, I don't really know…"

It took him several moments to realize that Dick had gone deathly still beside him. He looked up from his cup to find the boy watching him, his blue eyes widening in a look of pure elated wonderment. Oh dear, Bruce thought. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him yet that this might be something Dick would be invested in.

"You're going to meet The Muppets?!" he exclaimed excitedly.

Bruce coughed, trying not to laugh at Dick's blatant excitement. "It sure looks that way."

"Oh my God! Who? Who are you meeting?"

"I don't know," Bruce replied, handing Dick the slip of paper so he could read it himself. "It just says 'Muppets.'"

"This says you're on at ten pm." The boy twisted in his seat, turning wide, imploring eyes toward Alfred. "Can I stay up and watch? Pleeeeeease. It's Friday…"

The old butler sighed. "I'm not so sure, after the antics you pulled last night. I have half a mind to take that television out of your bedroom."

Dick turned away, flushing guiltily. "Bruce needed help…" he murmured.

"And I appreciate it, chum, really I do," Bruce said, placing a consoling hand over the top of Dick's much smaller one where it rested on the table. "But you can't run away from Alfred like that. Especially when you've been so sick for the last two weeks…"

"Okay," the boy said, so softly it was barely audible, his expression hopelessly forlorn.

Alfred sighed. "Oh, very well. You may stay up and watch the Muppets. But after that, straight to bed. And I want you to take a nap this afternoon. Your color is decisively peakish after being out in the cold last night."

Dick's smile was instant and radiant. "Thanks, Alfie!"

The old butler hummed, likely realizing he had been manipulated, but much like Bruce, he was too enamored with the boy to go back on his word now.

Dick turned back to look at Bruce, his expression comically quizzical on someone so young. "How come you get to do fun stuff with your secret identity and all I get to do is go to school?"

"Because you are nine years old," Alfred replied levelly, finally joining them at the table with a steaming cup of tea in hand. "When you're grown and in charge of your own life, then you can make a fool of yourself on national television as well."

"Thanks, Al," Bruce replied wryly.

"Will you get me their autograph?" Dick asked, like Bruce would be meeting an actual person and not a felt puppet being piloted by a human. It was probably something they were prepared for. They had to be. They were the Muppets.

"Sure," he said, easily. "I can manage that."

Dick grinned. "Cool. This is going to be so much fun!"

Bruce shook his head. He couldn't say he was looking forward to it that much, but at least Dick would be entertained. And, if he thought about it, it was kind of like a night off. It wasn't like this would be different from any other time he'd done the show. He'd just have to sit there and look pretty while a bunch of animals and puppets stole the limelight. How hard could it be?

Chapter Text

"Please welcome back to the show, Bruce Wayne!"

Bruce stepped out of the wings where he'd been waiting, and was plunged into immediate sensory hell.

The combination of applause and music was deafening. The lights overhead were both blinding and scorching. The sea of faces in the audience was indistinct and overwhelming.

Instinct made Bruce look for the glowing green lights of the emergency exits. Counting the rows of seats and calculating how many seconds it would take for all those people to vacate the space if something went wrong (too long). How long it would take him to help them (too long).

And then his smile was firmly in place, his limbs loosening into the easy, casual movements of Brucie as he crossed the stage to where Murray Franklin was waiting for him.

"Bruce!" the other man greeted him with a grin, rising from behind his desk to shake his hand and gesturing for him to take a seat. "It's good to see you!"

"You too, Murray, you too," Bruce replied, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat down. He did his best to make his smile seem genuine as the initial sensory assault faded into the residual and familiar unease of being generally perceived. "Wow, what a greeting." He laughed as the applause continued to ripple around them.

Murray gestured toward him with an open palm. "What can I say, the people love Gotham's favorite son. Don't we, ladies and gentlemen?"

An affirmative noise from the audience echoed back. Someone wolf-whistled, and he played it off by throwing a flirtatious wink out in the general direction it had come from with a flash of the infamous playboy grin.

Murray shook his head indulgently and resumed his seat. "Well, how the hell are you, Bruce?" he asked when the audience finally settled.

"All the better for being back, Murray," Bruce replied, amping up his enthusiasm another notch as he leveled out to match the energy of the room around him. "Thanks for having me. It's been a while."

"It sure has!" Murray agreed. "Almost a year since we last saw you, I think. Wouldn't you say so, Amanda?" He turned to look into the wings at his producer, who tolerated the camera panning toward her with a smile and a thumbs-up from the hand holding her clipboard. "A year too long if you ask me," Murray carried on with a bark of laughter, drawing the attention back to himself and Bruce. "Well, tell us, Bruce, what's new on your side of Gotham? How have things been?"

"Oh, you know me, same old same old," Bruce said easily with a casual wave of his hand, flashing his signature smile when he became aware of the first camera zeroing in on him for a close-up.

He expected Murray to lead him into a conversation about The Wayne Foundation just like he always did, but the other man chuckled, shaking his head. "Now, Bruce, you know that's not true."

Bruce frowned, genuinely clueless. "Do I?"

Murray gave him an incredulous look, arms held up wide. "Bruce, c'mon, everyone knows you've got a kid now."

Bruce faltered, his smile freezing in place as he processed this turn of events.

Of course, people were interested in the fact that the person they perceived as Bruce Wayne had adopted a child. Of course they were. It was all anyone had talked to him about this week at work, while offering helpful advice about Dick being sick. Why wouldn't Murray also ask him about it? And why hadn't Bruce foreseen this and been prepared? Ugh, he needed to get his head in the game over this. Being caught off guard like this was unacceptable.

"Uh, yeah." He gave a short little laugh and swept a hand through his hair, not having the feign nervousness. He could only hope it worked in his favor and didn't make him look like a deer caught in headlights. "I do, yeah, his name is Richard. He's nine, and likely watching, so please don't swear."

That got a laugh from the audience.

"Hey, you're the one letting him watch late-night television. No promises," Murray replied jovially, before his expression settled into something more serious. "Tell us more, though. How did that come about?"

The gears in Bruce's head stalled again, then began to spin rapidly. Surely, Murray wasn't going to ask him details about how Dick's parents had died. Surely he didn't honestly expect Bruce to go there, not when he'd just said Dick was watching.

He coughed, casting a furtive glance toward the audience before leaning conspiratorially toward Murray, talking in an exaggerated whisper behind his hand, "Well, Murray, I don't know if anyone has ever told you this, but when two people love each other very much…"

That got another burst of laughter from the audience. Murray nodded, taking the knock-back on the chin with a nod and a wry tilt of his head. He raised his eyebrows at Bruce in a look that seemed to say, All right, you got me. No digging there.

Bruce cleared his throat again and sat up straighter. "No, but uh, I adopted Richard…" He paused, jogging his head from side to side as he counted back the months in his head and making a show of it, though he didn't have to feign the incredulity that swept over him as he realized the numbers. "Six months ago?" He couldn't keep his voice from rising at the end like a question.

Jesus Christ, had it really been six months?

Somehow, it felt like only yesterday.

"Six months. Wow," Murray said, shaking his head. "Hard to imagine. I bet that's why we haven't seen you around as much. Judging by the look on your face, it's all still pretty new."

"You can say that again," Bruce rejoined, the crowd tittering with amusement at his tone. He leaned forward, nudging a friendly hand towards Murray. "Say, you've got kids, Murray. When does it stop feeling like you've got no idea what you're doing?"

Murray laughed along with the audience and leaned over the short divide between them to give him a friendly pat on the shoulder. "I hate to break it to you, Bruce, but they never stop throwing you curveballs. Just wait 'til he hits college age."

Bruce laughed in response and reached for the glass of water left out for him on the desk. "Well, I suppose I've got that to look forward to then…"

"But you're enjoying it? Being a dad?" Murray asked, hitting Bruce directly in the chest with an emotion he couldn't bring himself to name and could only hope didn't show on his face.

He swallowed his water painfully and nodded, choosing his following words carefully around the benign smile super-glued to his face. "That is… not a word we're using, but yes…"

"Yet," Murray jumped in, and Bruce tipped his head to the side with a wave of his hand, acutely aware of the cameras fixed on his person and the frantic flutter of his pulse at the base of his throat.

He hated this. He hated it. He would never do this again. Why couldn't Murray do what he always did and ask him about things that didn't matter?

"Or y'know, ever. That's entirely up to Richard. We're doing everything at his pace, and if he never wants to call anyone else 'dad,' that's perfectly fine. I get it, probably better than anyone else could." Bruce cleared his throat, surprised to find that the catch in his voice was devastatingly real. He cleared his throat again and forced a jovial smile back onto his face. "But to answer your original question: yes, I am enjoying being responsible for a tiny human who keeps trying to give me a heart attack. It's a lot of fun. And I'm learning a lot. Mostly that I don't know as much as I thought I did."

Murray held his hands up in an expansive gesture. "That's parenthood."

"So I'm told," Bruce replied, smiling ruefully as the audience rippled with laughter.

The interview veered back into more familiar territory after that, with Bruce getting to talk about the various charities The Wayne Foundation was supporting and what the latest line of consumer tech from Wayne Enterprises would look like next year. When the subject of dating inevitably came up, Murray teased him about likely not having time for as many dates, given his responsibilities as a parent, and asked him if he missed the playboy lifestyle.

"Murray," Bruce said with a rueful laugh, rubbing at his forehead in a genuine expression of exhaustion, "I'm going to level with you, I don't have any free time to miss it."

Not long after, the representative from Green Spaces Eco-Conservation Society came out onto the stage and began talking about their latest initiative to expand their wildlife preservation centers in a bid to put an end to the wealthy tourist hunting industry in Tanzania and Botswana—hunting spots which Bruce knew Lex Luthor and his inner circle of sycophants frequented. He knew because Luthor kept inviting him, and Bruce was steadily running out of ways to politely imply he'd rather chew broken glass.

"You don't hunt, do you, Bruce?" Murray asked, using his billionaire status to loop Bruce back into the conversation.

"Oh, God no," Bruce gave a delicate shudder. "Even if you overlook the cruelty of hunting purely for sport, which I can't, it sounds far too much like work." The audience laughed, and Bruce allowed it to die down before adding more seriously. "But, no, I think the work the GSECS is doing to protect wildlife in these locations is incredibly important. I mean, obviously, it'd be different if the hunting was out of necessity, like for food or a revered cultural practice that supports the local populace. But what is happening at these 'resorts'—" He made the airquotes as derisive as he possibly could. "—isn't any of those things. It’s about vanity, and it's cruel. I'd go so far as to say the cruelty is the point. And I can forgive vanity, but I cannot abide cruelty. Which is why the Wayne Foundation plans to match whatever the GSECS charity drive raises, and then I'll personally double it and match that amount for the next five years."

Emma clasped her hands over her mouth as the audience erupted into whooping applause. Bruce inclined his head, waving it off. He knew he should be doing this for purely altruistic reasons, but Clark had once told him that every time Bruce donated obscene amounts of money to charity, he could hear Luthor's teeth grinding from the top of LexCorp tower. He couldn't help but hope this would get him to leave Bruce alone, but also cost him an urgent trip to an endodontist.

Murray gave him an awed, slightly quizzical look. "Wow. Amazing, truly. What a generous offer. I must say, you surprise me, Bruce. I don't think I've heard you take such a strong stance on something before."

Bruce flashed him an impish smile and shrugged. "Hey, I can be serious sometimes. When I want to be. And I like animals, you know that."

"That's good," the woman from GSECS, Emma, said, the hint of a mischievous grin tugging at her mouth. "Because we brought you something."

"Me?" Bruce asked, twisting to look in his seat as another member from the GSECS wearing the same khaki-colored getup that looked like it belonged on a safari retreat appeared from the wings, carrying an animal carrier.

Oh dear. What had that waiver said when he signed it earlier? Were they about to dump another gnaw-happy predator in his lap? A bear cub this time, perhaps? Or another big cat?

"We brought you a new friend to meet," Emma said, reaching out to take the carrier from her assistant and setting it down at her feet, keeping her back carefully to Bruce to block his view. "Seen as how you were so good with the baby leopard last time."

Bruce opened his mouth to ask for more information, but stopped when she popped the lid and reached inside. She was facing away from him, but Bruce felt the collective inhale from the audience ripple around the room, punctuated by a series of nervous squeaks and shocked gasps. He braced himself to react.

Emma turned around to face him, a dark-scaled snake with a distinctive snout coiled around her arms. Its tongue flickered out, tasting the air.

Eastern hognose (Heterodon platirhinos), his brain supplied helpfully. Nonvenomous. Uses its prominent snout to burrow underground and hunt toads. If threatened, will attempt to intimidate with a hissing strike but rarely bites. If the feint fails, it will roll over and play dead.

Frankly, he'd been in more danger with the baby leopards.

But Brucie wouldn't know that.

Bruce tensed up, allowing his eyes to widen. His smile turned into a rictus grimace as Emma and her snake came toward him. "For me? You shouldn't have…" he said weakly, eyeing the snake nervously and looking around like he was contemplating vaulting over the back of the couch to get away. Murray had already vacated his desk with impressive speed and was standing several feet away, hands clapped over his mouth. Judging by how pale he'd gone, Bruce didn't think he was doing it for the bit.

"This is Onyx," Emma explained, still coming toward him, arm outstretched. The snake's tongue flickered again. "She's eight years old, so still pretty young for her species, at least in captivity. Here, Bruce, hold your arm out."

Bruce glanced imploringly between the snake and the handler. "Do I have to?"

He did as he was bidden, though, holding his arm steady. The snake, sensing Bruce's warmth, began to uncoil from around her arm, stretching toward him. Based on the delighted shrieks, the audience loved it.

Poor little thing, Bruce thought as the snake coiled tentatively around his arm. The smooth scales were warm around the exposed skin of his wrist. The noise was probably scaring the living daylights out of her. He resisted the urge to pull his arm closer to his torso and give her more of his warmth. He needed to look afraid right now, not impossibly enamored. Onyx really was a beautiful specimen.

"This is safe, right?" Bruce asked, hoping the fear in his voice sounded real as he held his arm out ramrod straight like he wanted to detach it at the socket.

"Absolutely," Emma said, switching into presentation mode now that she was sure Onyx was wrapped safely around his arm and evidently not too stressed out. "Onyx here is an Eastern hognose snake. They are nonvenomous, and although they do have teeth and will strike if threatened, they rarely bite."

"Oh, good," Bruce said weakly, getting a nervous twitter of laughter from the audience.

"So what you're saying is no sudden movements," Murray joined in, having come back to his desk. He glanced over to his producer. "I'm going to kill you, Amanda, you didn't tell me it would be a snake in the box."

"Tell you?" Bruce demanded just a touch shrilly as Onyx tightened her grip around his arm, her snout traveling higher up his bicep. "What about me?"

"You're doing good, Bruce, just hold her steady," Emma instructed before launching back into presentation mode, talking about the snake species, their habitat, and the current problem their rescue center in New York was facing with people adopting hognose snakes without being able to adequately care for them.

"So you're saying you're overrun with snakes?" Murray asked, sounding like he was seconds away from fainting at the thought.

"Sadly, yes," Emma replied. "We've even had people letting them loose into the sewers, which is really unfortunate."

Thank God they're not doing that here, Bruce thought. He couldn't tell what was worse, the thought of the snakes being mutated by whatever toxic sludge was being illegally dumped into the Gotham sewer system, or the idea of the poor things being fed to Killer Croc like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

He zoned back in on Emma, who was wrapping up her spiel about responsible pet ownership. "But hey, if you're a snake enthusiast and you've got the room for another pet, we'd love to hear from you." She gave the camera a cheery set of finger guns.

"How about it, Bruce?" Murray asked. "You've got a big house, and Onyx there seems pretty attached to you…"

"I—you can say that again." Bruce laughed nervously. He tensed up further as Onyx's head reached his chin. Her snout bumped against his throat as she hunted for a warm place to hide.

And found the open collar of his dress shirt.

"Um," he said, causing the shrieking laughter of the audience to intensify and triggering Onyx to redouble her efforts to find a dark, warm place to hide and shoving her head further down his collar. "Could someone… um, help?"

Emma, who had been diverted by something else Murray said, looked back at him and then darted forward. "Oh, no, Onyx! That's too friendly! Don't worry, Bruce, she's a sweety, really. She just likes to cuddle. Here, let me just…"

She slipped her hands around the snake, gently lifting her away from Bruce's neck and back around her own arm. Bruce sagged visibly with relief, collapsing theatrically back into the couch as the audience erupted with applause again.

"Well, Emma, I'd like to say it was a pleasure," Murray said, "but I'd be lying. No! I'm kidding, but please, leave and take Onyx with you. Emma and Onyx from Green Spaces Eco-Conservation Society, everybody! Be sure to check out their new website appearing on your screen below, and if you can, donate to help a wonderful cause. And Bruce Wayne, everybody! What a fantastic guy. All right, don't go anywhere, folks, we'll be right back after the commercial break when we'll be joined by the legendary Kermit the Frog and the effervescent Miss Piggy as they promote their latest movie, 'The Muppets Take Metropolis!'"

The applause rose to a deafening swell again as the band behind the podium struck up a lively tune, ushering them into a commercial break.

Bruce looked up from his slouch as he felt someone move into his personal space again.

"Really, thank you, Bruce," Murray said over the noise, angling his mouth away from the microphone as he leaned over his desk. "You couldn't have got me to hold that fucking thing for all the money in the world."

Bruce chuckled, affixing a benign smile to his face as he righted his posture again and tugged his suit back into order. "Oh, you know me, Murray. I'm game for anything if it's for a good cause."

"I couldn't agree more," said a shrill, familiar voice behind them.

Bruce twisted in his seat to find a team of stagehands working in rapid time to erect a staging area behind the couch, and two humans holding two very distinct puppets aloft: Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

Dick was going to lose his tiny mind, Bruce realized.

"Hi-ho, Kermit the Frog here." The frog puppet extended a green felt flipper toward him, causing a ripple of laughter to go up from the audience. Bruce arched an eyebrow at the puppeteer, but reached to take the 'hand' being offered to him when the man just blinked placidly at him. Evidently, he wasn't supposed to engage with the humans. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wayne. May I introduce my companion, Miss Pigathia Lee?"

"Mr. The Frog, Miss Lee," Bruce greeted them formally, inclining his head over the top of Miss Piggy's silk-clad hand when it was presented to him, pearl bracelets and all. "A pleasure."

"Well, it's nice to meet a real gentleman for a change," Miss Piggy replied, her snout creasing into a smile as she peered up at him from behind comically large lashes.

Behind him, the audience tittered with laughter again.

Bruce felt the first twitch of a genuine smile tug at his mouth. "Charmed to meet both of you," he replied. "I'm a huge fan of your work."

"Oh, gosh! Really?" the frog gushed, emoting the pure, flailing joy Bruce remembered from watching television as a child. "I could say the same to you! All the good work you do here in Gotham, boy, it really is something! Why, I never knew one person could do so much good. It's truly admirable. You've got a good heart, Mr. Wayne."

Don't cry, Bruce thought frantically as an unexpected surge of emotions welled up in his chest. Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry…

Christ. It was like being eight years old and hearing Mister Rogers say you'd done a good job and he liked you for being you.

Or his father.

"Oh, please, call me Bruce. And thank you," he said, inclining his head as he regained some semblance of emotional control over his voice. "Though I confess, it feels like a drop in the ocean compared to the good you've done over the years through Sesame Street and everything else you do. I can only hope to aspire to have such a lasting impact."

"Oh my, he's modest, too," the pig puppet purred, catching Bruce off guard and startling a laugh out of him.

"All right, save it for the cameras," Murray interjected good-naturedly, a finger pressed to his ear as he listened to whatever was being said to him on the other end of his earpiece.

"Mister Wayne?" Bruce turned to find his handler for the show waiting for him, a makeup artist hovering at her elbow. "Can we get you in place for this next part?"

"Of course," Bruce replied, moving where he was bidden and watching as the puppeteers got situated, vanishing behind the back of the couch. He peered over the back, trying to see what they were doing, then moved again when a stage hand asked him to move 'just a squidge to the left.' When Bruce moved and looked around, he realized they were using his bulk to block the sight of the puppeteers from the fourth camera. Clever.

He sat back placidly as the makeup artist moved in to touch up the powder on his face, listening as the handler instructed him on how to talk to the puppets.

Don't look at the puppeteers, look at the puppets.

Treat them like real people.

Try to keep it PG-13.

Have fun.

Just act natural.

Natural, Bruce thought, his eyes raising to the stage beams and lights hanging over them in the shadows above. There was nothing fun or natural about being Brucie Wayne.

A movement at the front center camera caught his eye, and he straightened up in time to see the lead producer gesturing toward Murray and the rest of the cast. "And we're live in five, four, three, two, one…"

The music rose again, accompanied by renewed applause, and Bruce let his smile slip back in place, as solid and protective as the armor waiting for him back home in the cave. He zoned out as Murray ran through the introductions with the puppets sitting beside him. Bruce had learned a long time ago that no one minded if Brucie looked a little checked out sometimes, which was just as well, because the night before was catching up with him.

Christ, he was tired. His ribs hurt. He hoped Dick was all right. Last night had been brutal, as was evident by the bruises across Bruce's ribcage and the fact that Dick had spent most of the day in bed again without being told to. Though he had insisted on getting up when Bruce was leaving, adamant that he wanted to watch Bruce make a fool of himself on television. Hopefully, he was having fun. The snake had probably had him in stitches.

Bruce could only hope no one else was watching. In fact, he hoped a mild disaster was happening somewhere else on the other side of the globe. Not a big one. Just a tiny one. Just enough to keep the Justice League busy enough that Bruce wouldn't have to listen to Clark rib him about how good he is with children and animals. Again.

It was like being made fun of by a slice of apple pie.

Slowly, through the fog of his exhaustion, Bruce became aware of the presence beside him. He looked down to find Miss Piggy watching him, snout turned upward, head tilted in a coy manner that heavily suggested flirtation.

Oh God…

"Not that you have anything to worry about with your company, Mister Wayne," the high, piping voice of Kermit the Frog informed him. "We'd never raid your secret vaults. Um, you don't have any of those in your tower, do you?"

Bruce chuckled along with the audience.

"If we do, it's a secret even from me," he lied smoothly. "But it's a shame you wouldn't consider taking up residency in Gotham." His smile twitched as the amorous pig puppet inched toward him. "We've got lots of nice swamps around here. Mud baths, too."

"Really?" Miss Piggy wheedled, flicking her blonde wig over her shoulder, much to the amusement of the audience and Bruce. "I don't suppose any of these mud baths are on Wayne ground?"

She batted her big eyelashes at him, and Bruce pursed his lips together, trying to suppress the ridiculous smile he could feel stretching over his face.

Miss Piggy was flirting with Brucie Wayne.

Sure. Why not?

He could roll with this.

He'd done weirder shit to maintain his civilian persona. Probably.

"Oh yes," he replied, inflecting the famous Brucie Wayne charm into his voice. "More than you can shake a stick at."

The exhale of laughter that startled out of him when the puppet put her hand on his arm was surprisingly genuine and out of his control.

"Now, Brucie," Miss Piggy drawled, batting her fluffy eyelashes at him again with a coquettish laugh that twinkled like Christmas lights. "You should know better than to tease a girl with a good time."

Some absurd instinct made him angle his body toward the puppet, his arm sliding along the back of the couch like he was putting on the moves in a darkened movie theater. He flashed a blinding smile down at the puppet, as if it were a real person. "Oh, Piggy Lee, you should know I don't tease. I can call you Piggy Lee, can't I?"

With a surprisingly lifelike look of startlement, the pig puppet looked between its face and its extended arm, and plastered itself to its side, snout turned adoringly upward. "Honey, you can call me a cab because I'm ready! Let's skedaddle!"

The audience lost it. Bruce bit the inside of his cheek.

"Well, how about that?" Murray exclaimed over the raucous laughter that showed no signs of dying down. "Kermit, I think Bruce here is trying to steal your girl!"

The frog turned to look at both of them and gave Bruce a look that could only be adequately described as 'appraising.'

"You know something, Murray," the frog said after a thoughtful pause. "I don't mind. Say, Bruce." He cleared his froggy throat. "Are uh, any of those swamps on Wayne grounds too?"

Oh, he was never going to live this down, Bruce thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He could see how the gossip headlines now: Kermit the frog confirmed bisexual during an interview with Bruce Wayne. Jesus Christ.

"Some of them, yeah," he said, voice cracking with suppressed amusement.

"How convenient," Miss Piggy purred. "Goodness," she carried on, drawing back to look incredulously between him and the camera, "someone works out. Is this what they mean when they talk about dad-bods? Woof!"

Bruce bit his lip, his shoulders shaking in silent laughter.

"Thank you?" he said questioningly. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his amusement under control. This was the surrealist fucking thing that had happened to him in a while. And that was saying something. He'd been fear-gassed this week. "I do a lot of pilates."

"Pilates?" The pig puppet echoed, incredulously. "Oh, I gotta get back to the gym. It's like cuddling up with Superman over here."

Oh, Clark was going to be insufferable.

"I think you're being over generous," he replied.

"To you or Superman?" Kermit asked, getting another burst of laughter from the audience as well as Bruce, who just held his hands up in a helpless gesture.

"I wouldn't like to say."

"No," Piggy agreed, her tone musing, "that's probably smart. You never know when you might need to call in a rescue."

"Oh, but I suppose you've got your own cape in Gotham for that," Kermit interjected, and Bruce felt his soul leave his body. "What's he called again?"

"Batman," he replied weakly.

"That's right, the Bat," Miss Piggy said in a breathless, excited rush. "Oh, the drama. Now there's a man who knows how to look good in leather. Not that he could hold a candle to you, Brucie," Miss Piggy hurried to assure him, her voice high and twinkling again as she tipped her head back against his bicep.

The sound Bruce made could only be charitably called a snort, and unfortunately for him, it only made him and the audience laugh harder.

"Is that so?" he asked when he could speak again. "You know, I'm starting to think you're only interested in me for my mud baths."

"And the swamps," Kermit interjected, "I am personally very interested in the swamps."

"And money," Piggy replied with ruthless honesty, sending the audience into hysterics again.

"Piggy!" Kermit scolded.

"What?" the pig snapped back, turning on her Muppet counterpart with abrupt hostility. "You think looking this good comes cheap? And Brucie doesn't mind, do you, Brucie? After all, honesty is the foundation of any good relationship."

"Relationship?" Bruce spluttered weakly as the audience fell into fresh laughter. He looked to Murray for help, but the host just shrugged, his eyes dancing with unrestrained glee.

He was probably envisioning their ratings.

"You're right, this is moving a little too fast," Piggy agreed. "We should have dinner first. What are you doing after the show?"

"I'm… It's not that I'm not flattered, Piggy," he said, trying to regain his composure as he dragged a hand down his face and only marginally succeeding, his voice tripping up into an octave he hadn't managed since he'd hit puberty. He couldn't seem to look at her without cracking up. It didn't help that the audience was still in hysterics. Dick was probably rolling around on the floor in a fit of giggles at home. Alfred too.

"What, vous turning down moi?" Piggy demanded, veering back from him in affront.

"No, no," Bruce hurried to course correct, holding his hands up imploringly. "It's not that."

"No?"

"No. I, it’s like Murray said earlier, I've got a kid to go home to. I can't be out all night…"

"Oh, that's right," Piggy replied, immediately soothed. "What was his name again?"

"Richard," Bruce said, near breathless with relief to be back on safer territory. "He's a huge fan of yours, by the way."

Miss Piggy looked delighted. "He is?"

"Yes, you and Kermit. We've been watching all your original episodes together. It's his favorite thing to do before bed."

A collective aww rippled around the audience.

"Oh, oh that's so sweet," Miss Piggy gushed, her tone deceptively soft and dare Bruce say it, maternal. "And you said earlier he's watching now?"

"He is. He found out you were going to be on and begged to stay up."

"Oh, well in that case… Where's the camera? Where…" She made a show of looking around before settling on the center point camera and clearing her throat. "Hello, Richard, darling, it is I, Miss Piggy."

"And Kermit the Frog," Kermit added, squeezing into the shot.

"Quiet you," Piggy muttered out the corner of her snout before reverting to her sweeter than honey tone. "As I was saying, it is I, Miss Piggy. I hope you're having fun, Richard, dear, but I have a very important message: Go. To Bed. Brucie and I need to talk. We'll bring him home later…"

The audience lost it again, and this time Bruce couldn't help but join them. He leaned forward, covering his face with both hands. "Murray, help," he pleaded from behind splayed fingers, his voice clogged with laughter. "I think I'm being kidnapped."

"No, no," Piggy soothed, placing a felt hand on his arm again. "You are entirely free to leave any time you want. Isn't that right, Kermi?"

"That's right." The frog nodded, then leaned in closer, raising a felt flipper to his mouth as he mimed whispering to Bruce. "Though between you and me, you'd best start running now."

Bruce wheezed, nodding behind his hands.

"Okay, so no after-show dinner," Piggy relented. "How about brunch?"

"Sure," Bruce said weakly, giving up. He'd already lost completely control of this situation; what was one more hit to his dignity for the bit?

"We'll have our people call your people," Kermit rejoined, and Bruce offered a wordless thumbs up. Then realized what the frog had said.

"Wait. Our?" he questioned, then started laughing again as Kermit gave him another look that should in no way be suggestive, but somehow managed it all the same.

"It's kind of a package deal," the frog informed him, and Bruce lost it again, nodding as he covered his face with both hands again, barely managing to muffle the sounds he was making. The audience was laughing like they'd been Joker-gassed.

Fuck, he was crying, he realized as he wiped tears from his eyes. His ribs were screaming from all the laughter. Why was this so fucking funny?

"How is this my life?" he whispered in a high-pitched, breathless wheeze that carried over on the mic.

"Just lucky, I guess," Kremit responded, sending him into another fresh fit of laughter.

His face hurt, his ribs hurt. But somehow this was the best Bruce had felt for a long, long time…