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When Bruce opens the door to his study, there's someone sitting in his desk chair, one ankle crossed over her leg. "It seems congratulations are in order," she says, in that throaty voice he knows she practiced for months to get right.
"Hello, Selina." He doesn't bother to turn on a light. She doesn't need one to get around, and he isn't feeling particularly hospitable at the moment.
"Oh, don't look at me like that," she says. "I really did come to be nice. I'm going out of town for a bit, and I thought I'd drop by to say goodbye."
"That's it?"
"Well, and I came across something and thought of you two, so I have a little present," Selina continues. "I told you not to look at me like that! It's perfect, alright? Dick will love it."
"I highly doubt that." Bruce ignores Selina's little wave of dismissal. "I think he'd probably prefer if you took whatever you have back to wherever you got it."
"Ungrateful," Selina says. "I've given you both a present and a case. You love cases, and unless things have changed significantly since we were all flipping around the cave together, so does he."
She swings out of the chair and slips over to him, pressing a little velvet box into his hand. "This isn't a trap, Bruce." Her smile slips from its practiced coyness into something closer to sincerity. "Sometimes a nice thing is just a nice thing."
"That hasn't really been my experience," Bruce says, but he takes the box.
"Mine either," Selina says, "but we both tend to land on our feet anyway, don't we?" She presses up and kisses his cheek, then trips over to the window. She's wearing a new perfume, something smokier than she usually goes for.
"I really am happy for you," she says, turning back. "Try to be happy for yourself, alright?" And then she flips backwards out the window and is gone into the night.
Bruce sits down in his desk chair with a heavy sigh. The moonlight through the window is bright enough to see by, and he opens the little velvet box with some trepidation. Inside is a pair of extremely antique gold earrings, each in the shape of a young man dangling from an eagle. Selina hasn't so much given him a case as a hot potato: these are the Ganymede earrings that were stolen from the Met two months ago.
It's not really a pleasant realization, he has to admit, to know that Selina saw a finely wrought representation of a story usually called a rape, and thought of him and Dick. Even if it's the old usage of the term, he's tried so hard over the years to curb his greedy, clawing impulses to grab Dick and hold him firm. He thinks, after two decades of practice, he's reached some success, but he's never sure that Dick would say the same.
"Bruce?" There's no reason, except for all of the obvious ones, that Dick's warm and familiar voice should feel like a weight on his shoulders. "Jesus, it's dark in here," he continues, coming around the desk to flick on a light. "You know, you aren't actually a nocturnal creature, you can turn on a table lamp once in a while. Unless you've got a migraine or something?"
"My head is fine," Bruce says, stiffly. "We've had a visitor."
It never ceases to amaze him, watching Nightwing settle over Dick, transforming him from a creature of ease straight out of a Leyendecker painting into a man he would, and has, followed into hell. "Who was it," Dick says. He's already halfway to the clock.
Bruce feels a little ashamed of himself for his dramatics. "No, it was only Selina. She had a present, and I couldn't manage to dissuade her." He opens the bag and lets the golden baubles spill into his hand for Dick to see. "I think it was meant for you, actually."
Dick laughs. "Not really my style."
"You couldn't wear them even if they were. I don't know what she was thinking."
"Probably her idea of a joke," Dick says. "But I could wear them. It might be a bit rough to get something in the holes after this long, but I have had my ears pierced, you know."
Bruce had not known. Why hadn't he noticed? When had this happened? He can guess— cheap earrings bought from some beachside kiosk with the Titans, or perhaps an undercover mission, Dick tossing his head to draw attention to a glint of silver at the hinge of his jaw. There's so much of Dick's life he doesn't know, even now. Was it a honeypot mission? He can't stop imagining it, Dick's head thrown back against a pillow, gold dangling down his beautiful neck. But if Dick wanted to repierce his ears, he could. There are earrings, tucked away safely with the rest of Martha's jewelry. Mostly not Dick's style, probably. He's not actually sure what jewelry Dick likes to wear. It's always seemed like a dangerous topic to broach.
"Uh oh," Dick says. "I don't like that expression. Bruce, do not buy me earrings."
"I wasn't planning on buying you any," Bruce grumbles, and Dick shoves him at his shoulder with a laugh.
"That's even worse! I can't wear your mother's jewelry."
"Why not?" Bruce knows he's pushing it, but he wants to know. "Who else am I supposed to give it to?" Dick sometimes says things like this, that betray his impression that there's someone else Bruce is meant to end up with, that Bruce is only having fun until he meets the real and presumably female love of his life. But Bruce has already had a devastating, all-consuming romance, and he's had no-strings fun. No-strings fun brought him the earrings tonight. What he wants, at this stage of his life, is a partner.
Dick's expression softens. "Bruce, come on," he says. "You should give that kind of thing to someone who will wear it, is all. Have it reset for Cass or something."
"You think Cass would wear it?"
"Bruce, if you gave it to her, she'd wear a Chuck-E-Cheese costume. At least ask her. It'd be better than moldering away in a jewelry box no one but you has opened for decades."
Bruce hums. Dick is probably right. He's not sure why he never thought of it before. Probably because you hoard anything of your parents as though they might step back through the door at any minute and have opinions about your housekeeping, says the snide little voice in his head.
"I have a more pressing concern," Bruce says. "How on earth are we supposed to get these back to the Met?"
Dick grins. "I think we can rely on our old friend, Mr. A. Nonymous Donner."
It really shouldn't work, but it does. Dick calls in a favor with one of his old curator friends and gets his friend's brother "Tom County" a slot on the art handling team for the latest special exhibition. Duke, in a really dreadful goatee he had insisted on growing for the occasion, slips the earrings out of his pocket and leaves them on top of their empty case when they walk through that gallery on their way to museum storage. And the assistant curator of Greco-Roman art nearly has a heart attack when she comes into work in the morning.
When the hubbub has died down a bit Dick meets his friend for drinks and mentions airily that he'd heard something about a particular flaw in the design of the cases in that gallery. The Met both ups their security and, later in the year, throws a special exhibition themed around the newly returned earrings. Something about jewelry and power, the kind of thing that gets people in the door to ooh and ahh over ancient filigree and looks excellent to donors.
As a thank you Dick gets an after-hours look, and when he asks if he can bring Bruce along the curator, obviously sniffing a possible donation, is almost overcome with paroxysms of fluttering helpfulness. Bruce suspects she's making some assumptions about Dick and Bruce's personal connection to the earrings that he can't correct without awkwardness. So instead he goes dutifully to the gallery after the museum is closed, and smiles and nods while the curator gives a little speech, and smiles and nods a little more stiffly when she gives them a knowing smile and says she'll just be down the hall, and Dick should come find her when they're done.
Then it's just them and a room full of priceless artifacts. Diana would have a fit. "You'd think after you alerted them to flaws in their security she wouldn't just leave us alone with the earrings you told her you know how to steal," Bruce grumbles.
Dick waves a hand. "Museums," he says. "Everything in the art world operates on reputation, and I have one. So do you, and it's not really as a lover of antiquities."
Bruce grimaces. Brucie goes in more for modern art, anything flashy and trendy and expensive. His own tastes are— well, he mostly leaves the manor decorating to Alfred. He likes things for what they mean: family portraits, mementos, photographs.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Dick's walked around the central case, bending down to peer more closely at the tiny golden youth and the eagle, frozen in the moment of capture.
"No," Bruce says. In all honesty he finds the earrings horrifying. He almost wishes he'd refused them and let Selina run off with them. The idea of turning that story into a bauble to wink on a patrician lady's ear turns his stomach. "What right did he have to rip that boy from everything he'd ever known? To make him a servant, a decorative plaything?"
Behind the glass the youth's arm curves up to embrace the eagle as it swoops to seize him. His miniature lips are pressed to the wicked curve of its beak, uncaring of the talons that reach for his naked side.
"Bruce, Zeus was a god." On the other side of the case Dick's eyes are too knowing. "I think he sort of gets to do whatever he wants, at that point."
Bruce shakes his head. "I don't accept that."
"Anyway Ganymede was a shepherd, wasn't he? Lonely, dangerous work. And he got spirited away to the very heart of things, to eavesdrop on the gods? I know what I'd prefer."
"Do you?" Bruce tries to catch Dick's eye again. He knows his gaze is too intense for them to still only be speaking of the story, but he can't quite school his features.
Dick gives him a quick little smile. Familiar, in the way it flashes across his features, a spark of brilliance tumbling and then gone. "Yes," he says. "And before you get into your head about it, it isn't the mountaintop with the sheep."
it's too close to the thing they don't talk about, the thing that makes Dick shut down when Bruce tries to apologize, or if not apologize, to make amends. Sometimes I think I ruined you, he wants to say. What a shockingly self-absorbed thing to think of another adult, and one who has proven over and over again that he can leave Bruce whenever he wants. But it's true. He looks at Dick, the arch of his nose, the fine fluted curve of his lip, the most beautiful man he's ever met. He's still staring down at the earrings, his brow a little furrowed.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Hm? Oh," Dick says, and smiles. "Flying."