lethargicprofessor prompted: I'm not positive that it'll fit the rules for the au week, but how about reality show batfam? Where there's a camera crew following the richest guy in gotham and dealing with his dumb grown up kids who never seem to have anything to do :D
Batman and related properties © DC Comics
story © RenaRoo
The Waynes' World
Lucius stirs his coffee methodically, looks at Bruce carefully, judging the tired wrinkles around the man's eyes. There's several tiny tellings that the man is at his wit's end, least of which being the slight flinch at every sound made around the office.
"This is killing you, Bruce," Lucius sighs as he puts down his stirring rod and rubs at his eyes. "You have to cancel."
"No," Bruce says, defiant almost. "I am showing them. This… it's a lesson."
"For who?" he asks, looking worriedly to to his friend. "What will a cable access show teach four children about allowing their father to command some respect?"
Bruce glares back. "Five."
"Dick doesn't live at home anymore, Bruce," Lucius says with a wave before pausing. "… you have them following adult son, too? Did that teach him a lesson."
Sitting back in his chair, Bruce closes his eyes. There's a vein pulsating on his forehead that has Lucius mildly concerned.
"He has a very lucrative offer from Hanes now," Bruce says after some thought. His eyes open again and he looks defeatedly back at Lucius. Finally. "I… may have made a mistake."
When "Life with the Waynes" first aired, the pilot episode got little buzz.
Even the many Gothamites, ever biting at the bit for news of scandal involving their own First Family or just curious about the interiors of one of the largest mansions on America's east coast, were less than thrilled with the episode.
Each of the four Wayne children were shockingly uncomfortable on camera. Their eyes darted and they stuttered through everyday conversations.
Bruce Wayne himself hardly appeared past the opening where he left for work.
There was an ongoing "gag" that no one quite understood where things would seem to appear from slightly off camera - food, changes of clothes, a sly comment - and the kids would look into the side of the lens and mutter "Thanks, Alfred."
The show seemed doomed for cancellation until the last five minutes when the eldest Wayne, a surprise appearance on the show as living outside the Manor had led to him not even being in the initial opening song, came to bum some dinner off of his family after working out at the gym.
There is a distinct possibility that the shorts he chose for himself were illegal in most other parts of the world.
The five minutes of footage trended for the next twenty-four hours. The half minute segment of him wrestling food from the second oldest of the family, the residential bad boy in a leather jacket, only for both of them to spill milk all over themselves was edited and reached a million hits on Youtube within twelve hours.
"Life with the Waynes" was signed on for twenty more episodes.
After ten more minutes on the phone, Dick hangs up, his head feeling a little more fuzzy than when the conversation had started.
Without providing any warning, he falls back onto the couch, sprawling out over the cushions and Barbara's lap like a limp noodle.
It probably speaks to how long they've been together that, knowingly she has lifted her hands to allow him to not poke his eye out on her nails, then immediately lowers them again, one still holding her book, the other now carding through his hair.
"Going to try to tell me what that was all about?" she asks, eyes not lifting form the page.
"Show producers," he says with a wave of his hand. "They think I need to be on the show more and are willing to give me double pay if I talk Jason into doing a mud fight with me. And not to tell Tim that we're pulling him down with us."
Barbara hums and turns her page with an expert flick of her thumb. "Is Jason getting the same offer?"
Dick laughs. "He doesn't have to be paid to do that. I'm pretty sure he came up with the idea."
Lowering her book, Barbara looks at Dick seriously, a slight frown on her face. "Are you going to do it?"
"Well, I mean. I don't often get paid to do crazy stuff with my family, it's kind of an awesome deal," Dick says, grin widening. "Tim is going to be so pissed!"
"No, I mean, sign to be on the show more?" she asks, turning slightly so she shift his head more into her lap. "You already have so little free time thanks to that thing. Doing it full time?"
"'Free time' and 'full time' are relative terms when your dad's a billionaire, Babs," he said with a sigh. "I kind of forgot about that when I moved out. How much you can fill your time with nothing when you don't have adult stuff. Only, used to it drove me crazy. I had to get out. Now…"
She quirks an eyebrow. "Now you can humiliate Bruce on public television?"
"It's kind of amazing," he admits. He pats her hand. "I might need to do this. It might be my destiny. To take the high-and-mighty Bruce Wayne down a peg."
"By supporting the public opinion that you and your siblings are assholes to each other," she surmises.
"It's a heavy burden, but someone has to do it."
Tim, somehow, became the third most popular "character" on the show. And to say he wasn't trying would be a vast, vast understatement.
He looked like a deer in headlights at every prank pulled. He bowed out the moment Bruce's wrath was made even possible. The times where he seemed to forget a camera was on them always ended with him going stock still and staring at the crew with slight horror.
The success he had in the ever widening fan community seemed to be attributed less to his snappy retorts to his brothers, the near neurotic way in which he corrected even their most insane plots, or how he was constantly flushed red, and more to do with the fact that his most every expression was, in some way or form, crafted into a meme.
A popular one was his face from being caught on camera after being the one to break the ice sculpture specifically bought for a Wayne Family gala.
'Wasn't me - okay it was totally me.'
He's not even sure why he has friends.
His siblings are less cruel.
"Oh, my gosh. Tim!" Steph chokes out, turning the iPad around so the rest of their booth could see the next meme on his fan Tumblr.
He has a fan Tumblr.
"'Wasn't me watching you come out of the shower okay it was totally me,'" Tam manages to read before lowering her head and snorting.
Ives looks about ready to kill over, but he takes off his glasses and wipes tears from his eyes instead.
"It's not funny," Tim growls. "Why does everyone think I'm such a little creeper? I'm not a little creep!"
"You're a little bit of a creep," Steph replies, laugh still in her voice as she takes her iPad back to continue scrolling."
"No I'm-"
"Yeah," Tam, Ives, and Stephanie say in tandem without even looking up from their meals.
Tim shoves his fries to one side of his tray. "Not that much of one."
Halfway through the first season, the "confessional" bits stopped all pretense and allowed for fan submissions on the Facebook page.
It was what led to Jason being asked if he had ever done hard time.
While popular conscious seemed to be expecting either an affirmative answer or a violent outburst at the producers for having the audacity to ask him such things, Jason always lived for the surprises. He swiveled in his chair to face the second camera for a beautiful shot-reverse-shot, raised his brow seductively and said,
"Depends. Does it count to be doing… hard time for love?"
He cackled about himself for the rest of the night, long after the camera crew went home and his siblings made it very clear they were done listening to him laughing about himself.
When the episode aired, Jason - for the first time since the pilot - received more likes and trended more than Dick.
Not to be outdone himself, Damian - whose "cute kid" factor had sustained him fairly reasonably throughout most of the show - got a puppy for his birthday.
The sales of great danes increased twelve percent in the month following the episode. And the number of registered dogs named 'Titus' experienced a boom as well.
Jason continues to ignore the middle aged moms whispering and appraising him like a side of beef as he leans back against the car. He's just trying to get as close to done with his cigarette before Damian comes as he can, and getting annoyed at these old ladies and their very purposeful winks at him isn't going to get him his nicotine fix.
"That is a disgusting habit," Damian hisses, crossing the street as Jason flicks the butt of the cigarette into the nearby trashcan's ashtray.
"So's mumbling," Jason responds. "No one's getting onto Tim."
Damian rounds the car, gives Jason an exasperated look, and then yanks open the passenger door.
The kid's in a hurry. And that's the only excuse Jason needs to take his dear, sweet time getting in the car.
By the time he was in the driver seat and painstakingly taking time to put his seatbelt on, Jason can see Damian literally shaking.
"What's your hurry, brat?" Jason asks with as much affection as humanly possible.
"Your antics are gaining the attention of my every classmate. I was asked today if I had access to your underwear drawer!"
Jason stops and gives his brother a serious look. "You can take the cheap ones from the Walmart packs, but like the nice briefs? If we give those out we're only expecting profit."
"You're ruining my life, Jason!" Damian screeches, just as a group of middle school girls walk by the window.
"Hold that thought," Jason says before rolling down the window. He winks at them and then to the mothers from earlier.
He's not sure which group squeals louder.
"I will not allow myself to be seen on that show for another second!" Damian vows.
"Ah, man. Don't ruin our fun," Jason says, but he knows he couldn't maintain a straight face if his life depended on it.
Cassandra's lack of popularity was partially contributed to the fan base mostly consisting of women far more interested in taking shots for each shirtless image on the show than in the actual antics of the series.
Her real fame came from the interview segments and "confessionals" once the show's producers realized that they had not been utilizing their female "character" enough yet.
No matter what was asked of her, she gave no verbal response. She would shrug, laugh, smile, raise her brows, motion with her hands. But she never said anything.
But she was not nervous. If anything, she seemed the most natural at "stage" life.
That was when fans began to pay attention to her in the backgrounds of scenes and in her interactions with her brothers' various schemes and problems.
And they realized… every time something went wrong, every time the unexpected seemed to happen by accident… Cassandra Wayne was the hand guiding the events along.
When this revelation made its way around social media, the family realized for themselves that for months on the shoot at that point… they had spent the vas majority of their time basically being punk'd.
Bruce frowns.
"I believe I made a mistake," he confesses.
"the important thing, Bruce," Lucius replies, patting his friend's shoulder, "is to take this as a learning experience."