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The rain over Gotham was little more than a whisper against the windows of the Batbunker, a rare moment of quiet in a city that never learned to sleep. Bruce had meant to review the new toxin analysis from the riverfront bust, had meant to scrub through three hours of surveillance footage, had meant to do anything other than this.
But Ghost-Maker had shown up unannounced, helmet tucked under one arm, rain slicking back the stray hairs that refused to behave. He'd leaned against the console with that familiar, infuriating half-smile and said, "You look tense."
And Bruce, stupidly, had let him stay.
Now the back of his head pressed against the cold glass of a display case—the one holding a replica of his very first cowl, because of course that was the one, while Ghost-Maker's mouth worked a slow, devastating path down his throat. Bruce's fingers curled into damp black fabric, not quite pushing him away, not quite pulling him closer. Somewhere in between. The same place he always lived when it came to Minh.
"Always so still," Ghost-Maker murmured against his collarbone, teeth grazing just enough to bruise. His hands had found the hem of Bruce's undersuit, thumbs tracing the ridges of scar tissue beneath the Kevlar. "Like you're afraid someone will hear you breathe."
Bruce swallowed a sound that wanted to be a gasp. "Minh—"
"That's not a no."
They'd done this enough times by now—enough that Bruce had stopped counting, stopped pretending it didn't mean something. Enough that Ghost-Maker knew exactly how to press, exactly where to touch, exactly how long to hold before Bruce stopped fighting and started feeling.
This time was no different.
Ghost-Maker kissed him again, deeper, one hand sliding up to cup the back of his skull—protecting it from the glass, which was so absurdly tender that Bruce felt something twist in his chest. He kissed back harder than he meant to, mouth opening, letting Minh take what he wanted.
And Bruce gave. That was the part no one would believe. Not the League, not Alfred, not any of the children he'd collected over the years. Bruce Wayne, giving control away like it cost him nothing. But with Ghost-Maker, it didn't cost. It earned. Every surrender bought him a moment of silence in his own head, a reprieve from the endless calculus of contingency plans.
Ghost-Maker pulled back just far enough to look at him—dark eyes half-lidded, rain-cold lips already flushed. "Bedroom," he said. Not a question.
Bruce nodded once. Short. Sharp. The way he did everything.
They made it as far as the armory before Bruce's back hit the reinforced steel of a weapons locker with a clang that would have made Alfred sigh. Ghost-Maker's thigh pressed between his legs, and Bruce bit down on a groan so hard his jaw ached.
"Quiet," Ghost-Maker teased, low and hot against his ear. "Wouldn't want the little birds to hear what their big, scary father sounds like when he finally stops thinking."
Bruce's hips bucked involuntarily. Traitors.
He opened his mouth to say something cutting, something to reclaim the upper hand, to remind them both who he was when the sun came up, but Ghost-Maker chose that exact moment to drop to his knees.
All that came out was a sharp, bitten-off exhale.
Ghost-Maker looked up at him through his lashes, already working fastenings loose with practiced efficiency. "There we go," he said, almost gently. "That's better. Let me hear something, Bruce. Just once."
Bruce let his head fall back against the locker. The metal was cold through his cowl—no, wait, he'd taken the cowl off hours ago. Just his face, bare and human and there, while Minh's mouth found new places to ruin him.
He didn't scream. He never screamed. But he breathed—harder than he meant to, sharper, each inhale catching on something ragged in his chest. Ghost-Maker seemed to measure his progress by those sounds alone, cataloging every stutter, every barely-there whimper that Bruce would deny to his grave.
Above them, the Batcomputer hummed quietly to itself. The comms were scattered across the console where Bruce had left them after patrol—a jumble of earpieces and backup units, none of them in their charging docks.
Neither of them noticed which one was still blinking green.
---
Two hours earlier, Tim Drake had made a choice he would regret for the rest of his natural life.
"Just leave the channel open," he'd said, rubbing his eyes as he slumped over the Cave's secondary monitor. "If the tampering on the GCPD scanners gets worse, I want to be able to patch him in remotely without having to wake up everyone."
Dick had frowned from the zeta tube platform. "Tim. It's two in the morning. Bruce is probably already asleep."
"Bruce doesn't sleep."
"Fair point." Dick had shrugged, then stepped through. "Don't let him catch you. You know how he gets about open mic channels."
"Yeah, yeah."
Tim had tagged the comm line as active, set the alert threshold to high-priority only, and promptly fallen asleep in his chair.
He woke up to the sound of Ghost-Maker's voice, crystal clear through the Cave's speakers, saying:
"There we go. That's better. Let me hear something, Bruce. Just once."
Tim froze.
He waited for context. For Bruce to reply with something clinical, 'the toxin levels are rising, Minh, focus', or for the unmistakable sound of a sparring match gone sideways.
Instead, he heard Bruce exhale. A sound Tim had never heard before in his life. Low, shaky, and absolutely, unequivocally not a sparring sound.
Then: the soft, wet noise of a kiss. Followed by another. Followed by the distinct, unmistakable creak of the armory locker under someone's weight.
Tim's hand moved to the mute button on autopilot. But it was too late. The channel was two-way. Which meant—
"—did not just hear that." Jason's voice, crackling through on his own private line. "Tim. Tell me I did not just hear Ghost-Maker on Bruce's comms making bedroom eyes at our father."
"I heard it too," Steph whispered, somehow also on the line now. "Oh my God. Oh my God."
Cass didn't say anything. But Tim saw her read receipt pop up. She'd heard.
"Don't—" Tim finally managed, his voice strangled. "Don't say anything. Don't type anything. Maybe it's—maybe we're misinterpreting—"
"Wouldn't want the little birds to hear what their big, scary father sounds like when he finally stops thinking," Ghost-Maker purred through the speakers.
Dead silence on the Batfamily channel.
Then Dick: "I'm calling a family meeting."
"Absolutely not," Tim said.
"I'm driving to the Cave," Jason said. "Someone better have popcorn."
"I'm not listening anymore," Steph announced. Then, five seconds later: "Okay, I'm still listening. Is Bruce moaning? Because I can't tell if that's a moan or a—"
"Stephanie," Tim begged.
From the armory feed: a sharp gasp. Bruce's voice, wrecked and barely audible: "Minh—door—"
"No one's coming," Ghost-Maker replied, smug as sin. "I locked it myself. Now stop thinking about them and think about me."
"I'm going to be sick," Jason said.
"Already am," Tim replied.
They listened to another thirty seconds of absolute torture—Bruce breathing like he'd just run a marathon, Ghost-Maker murmuring things in what sounded like Cantonese and English interchangeably, the faint thud of a body being pressed harder against the lockers, before the channel finally, mercifully went dead.
Bruce must have knocked the earpiece off when he turned his head.
For a long moment, none of them spoke.
Then Dick cleared his throat. "Okay," he said slowly. "New rule. No open comm channels after midnight. Ever."
"Seconded," Tim croaked.
"Thirded," Jason said. "I'm also requesting hazard pay. Emotional damage hazard pay."
Cass's message came through a moment later, single word in the group chat:
Interesting.
Steph replied with a gif of a cartoon character screaming into a void.
And somewhere in the armory, unaware that his entire family now knew exactly what "quiet" meant to Bruce Wayne, Ghost-Maker pressed a kiss to the corner of Bruce's mouth and whispered, "Told you you'd feel better."
Bruce, for once, didn't argue.
He just breathed.
---
The next morning, Alfred found the Batfamily group chat renamed to The "Bruce Wayne Has Never Been Quiet in His Entire Life and We Have the Audio to Prove It" Support Group, and very deliberately did not ask any questions.
He did, however, add a single entry to the household chore chart:
Clean armory lockers. Twice.