The Playboys of Gotham
Just a little fic inspired by a line from Batman & Robin: Batman Reborn. Warnings of mild M-rated content but it is mostly borderline T-rated, and please review after reading! As always, the characters belong to DC comics. :) MC. xx
" 'Bruce has a son? Oh, he's adorable!' 'Never mind that. How do I get Richie Grayson to look my way?' "
Part One: Business (Bruce Wayne)
Few would expect to find Gotham's top billionaire, playboy and philanthropist occupying a hard leather seat in a dank, dark cave at three o'clock in the morning, although few Gothamites knew him well enough to assume that he would be there.
There were a lot of assumptions made in this city, really. For example, the fact that a rich man both hosted and attended countless socials, soirees and business events with other members of the nouveau-rich class automatically endowed him with notable sexual prowess. Idle rumours were all that fuelled this reputation whilst he burrowed down below, with computers that told him what was happening that instant in a city more corrupt than Hell itself. There was a sweet irony in all those gold-diggers claiming to have slept with someone whose absence at his own party was barely noticeable. Those kinds of relationships weren't important to the mission. Not unless they held a tactical advantage, and then the girls were usually politely directed towards Dick.
Another assumption that worked in his favour was that he was really, really, bad at polo. It made it easier to explain the scars on the rare occasion that he did have sex with someone. Charitable events were long associated with his family and the odd polo tournament never went amiss. The likes of Bane, and Joker, and Dent didn't care how the man behind the mask concealed his exploits; not when it was so easy to spill his blood for their twisted cause. He didn't care much either, so he allowed the admittedly limited imaginations of the other socialites to run wild.
A soft ping indicated that the scans of the corpse occupying the medical table were complete. After a brief analysis, he would know how to approach tonight's mission. Every detail, every weakness, every advantage would be his for the taking when the Batman put the world to rights. There would always be scum crawling out of the underworld of this city, all players with varying degrees of conniving importance. The warlords and the madmen were really no different to the thieves and murderers on the street, although knowing the individual was the key to successful tactics. Even dead, a man could hold secrets to a world that most elites were too scared to dream of. Hence haunting a darkened metallic cave at 03:00 AM would always be preferable to lurking around the hors d'oeuvres and champagne upstairs.
A final, cruel assumption was that his occasionally erratic behaviour was some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Having studied various types of mental disorder when predicting the next move of Arkham's most frequent guests, he couldn't quite agree with that sentiment. On the other hand, he also couldn't fully deny it. He could achieve far more for Gotham as Batman than as the billionaire Wayne, and public appearances in the rich-boy mask were just a large inconvenience to his cause. He would never stop trying to avenge his parents, with their portraits and photographs reminding him each waking moment of what he was put on this earth to do. And even if their killer was ever brought to justice there was always more filth in Gotham's rotten underbelly that needed the fear of The Batman put into them. Once the cowl went on, nothing else mattered.
The party continued to hum in the Manor above, oblivious to the absence of its host, and he would let them believe what they wanted to believe. The guests wouldn't even feel the blast from the car's rocket boosters, and only by chance would they catch a glimpse of tonight's justice on the news. There was always more important work to be done than fuelling gossip.