Bruce's date for the evening had mentioned some good-looking guy with a BBC accent who'd torn up around the circle drive in a convertible, but aside from the foreigner status that described a good handful of his usual guests at the Wayne charity functions. It was when he caught sight of the man himself that he was hit with how much he stood out: smoothly swept head of dark hair, warm but piercing gaze, and the man wore a suit like the style had been invented just to sit on his shoulders and compliment his stride.
The man seemed to slowly hone in on Bruce while he was watching the crowds sway to the soft jazz. He set his martini down on the bar next to where Bruce was leaning into it.
"You're not very good at what you were just doing, I'm afraid," he said.
Bruce had already been looking, but his gaze sharpened on him. "Excuse me?"
"Using a dance with your lady friend to listen in on certain members of the crowd," he explained, that voice all wry and posh. "It wasn't obvious to your partner, which is a commendable priority, but it's clear to me you have reservations about that bald man, and possibly the one he was talking to over by the ice sculpture."
"You caught me," Bruce said casually. "I tend to get into the awkward predicament of suspecting uninvited guests when I don't always know half of who I invited."
"I'd be happy to help you keep an eye on them."
Affecting polite puzzlement, Bruce said, "You are…?"
The man offered a cordial if quick handshake. "James Bond. I'm with MI6. On holiday, of course."
Bruce's brows had slowly raised in amusement. He waved for a refill of his drink. "You're awfully candid for a spy, aren't you? Not to mention a little ostentatious. What brings you to Gotham?..."
Just then he scanned the room again, and noticed that the bald man and his buddy weren't to be seen anywhere, and interrupted Bond's response.
"—Excuse me."
He needled through the party at a speed that wouldn't draw attention, but quickly drew up his pace when he was out of the convention hall.
Trying to stick to the carpeting to soften his foot falls, he checked the library and glanced into the sitting room on his way to the nearest surveillance room. As he glanced over the monitors it took a moment to see movement in one of the rooms where he would have least expected it: Alfred's private office. The upstairs office of course, where his unassuming personal computer was now being taken apart by those two suspicious guests.
"What the hell?" he whispered, and went for a communication button on the desk, calling, "Alfred?"
The response was a bit delayed, fuzzy through the noise of the ball. "Yes sir?"
"Kindly get the servers to help dissolve the party as quickly as possible, but offer the band an extra thousand to keep playing for a while. And get our outdoor security to bar the east and north exits. Make sure none of the guests are leaving that way and that anybody who's trying to gets apprehended."
He moved quickly back out through the sitting room, taking corners cautiously on his way to the southeast wings. He was just sidling up to the doorway of the office when he picked up hushed voices, stopped to try to decipher words.
A tangle of swift motions brought a hand flat to his mouth and an arm around his shoulders; Bruce very nearly gave the assailant an introduction to his own pressure points and the fine wood of the flooring, and would have if he hadn't recognized the same Montblanc cufflinks he'd admired earlier on that wrist—
Bruce twisted around to make out Bond with his finger to his lips, making a motion to follow him. Ruffled and annoyed, he followed him into the smaller reading room and silently latched the door behind them.
Before Bond could try to take the lead on this, Bruce said just above a whisper, "Unless you have some idea why those guys are making like my butler has a stash of drugs somewhere, I need you to lay off the chivalry."
Bond looked reluctant; Bruce squinted at him.
"Or maybe you're actually here on business," he surmised.
"I'm after them," Bond explained quickly, "only we figured they were here to rendezvous with someone. It looks more like they're trying to retrieve a needle in a haystack."
"Sounds like you've got time to explain."
He sighed. "We're investigating a terrorist group which uses its own uniquely coded transmitters to arrange meetings and pass information. The transmissions are made using a special kind of microchip; we managed to get all ten of them which are supposed to exist, only to pick up an eleventh identical transmission—"
"Coming from here?" Bruce interrupted, preoccupied.
"I think you know something about it."
"I know they won't find it," he said in dry confidence.
Bond considered with defeated sarcasm, "I don't suppose you've just had a really expensive microwave looked at by a shady repairman."
Bruce had already been coming up with the half-lie to quickly smooth this over. "I happened to be around when the police were getting to some black market contraband. You were probably right about there only being ten of those chips; what we found was the photomask."
"The—pardon?"
He scoffed, smirking. "Let me guess, you love all the expensive toys but you just stand there and look pretty while some underpaid genius struggles to make you pay attention to how it all works."
Bond looked more impressed than offended, and the gentlemanly caught-out smile put an odd feeling in Bruce which totally melted the hint of annoyance.
"A photomask is a template for lithography—it uses light and radiation to create something extremely intricate—"
"Like a microchip."
"And it's worth a fortune for the manufacturers but a really strange find among stolen goods. The police don't have the lab equipment to test out what could be so special about what it makes, much less make one, but I thought I'd try—but I'm obviously not qualified to be in possession of evidence so this was, you know, under the table."
With Bond's line of work, he would have read all up on Bruce Wayne's merely respectable education and socialite skills: the beat of scrutiny in his look said, Who even are you?—but there was nothing Bruce could do about that except ignore it, and for the moment Bond did the same, assuring,"I can get other operatives here at a word; you don't have to worry about reports to local authorities. But I really need to get my hands on the thing before they do, and there may be more of them here than you realize."
"Isn't that a good thing for you?"
"It's always nice to make an arrest after a few drinks," he agreed with a loose shrug.
Bruce tried to think quickly: he was either going to have to find some way to get Bond off his back or use him without giving away too much. "I saw those two go past the metal detectors so they can't be armed, but I'd rather keep them to this side of the manor where they don't know they've been made. Be prepared to act casual if we run across them."
Bond clearly wanted to make a better plan of action but Bruce was already turning the door handle and pulling him back into the hallway with a brief grab on his elbow, and they walked along quietly but not with any obviously furtive sneaking. Bruce was leading them back toward the west library to try to cover that way out.
He was thinking, if he could just come up with some reason for Bond to meet his people outside, that would give him time to get that chip from the underground labs—he was about to whisper to ask Bond something when they both heard steps briefly clicking on the flooring between the rugs in the room behind them, just far enough that they couldn't be deliberately tailing them.
Bruce was the one who pushed Bond by the shoulders into the dim space just outside of the lamplight above the library entrance, quickly loosening Bond's tie and disheveling his collar, but Bond didn't flounder or hesitate to play along when Bruce buried his mouth into his neck and breathed all the heavy noises to give even a creeping terrorist a pause of reflexive embarrassment at the couple sneaking off from the party. Bond's hands smudged into his hair, helping to hold them together into an anonymous bundle of groping.
Bruce had had reason to try this kind of show once before, with Lois of all people, and was always embarrassed to recall that it had not really been sold for more than a second. Bond put it right out there, lowly groaning, "Gonna take you home and see you choke on my cock," and it wasn't just the surprising switch of an American accent he put on but the effortless audacity that made Bruce very easily improvise a half-laughing half-yearning little moan, which was cut off with a soft approximation of a noisy kiss between them.
They sold it. As soon as Bond's hold on his head became a businesslike tug back on his collar, Bruce knew they were alone, and straightened up. His voice gone flat, Bond said, "They'll probably try a different way out. I'll have my men pick them up and clear the premises...In the meantime, I don't suppose you have a panic room?"
Bruce suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd pretended to need a bodyguard while some cops did the hard work. "You haven't made any calls so I'm guessing you're wired. Could you do me a favor and not be?"
Bond gave a hesitant twinge of a smile, then held up a sleeve and began to slowly take out one cufflink, then the other. With a look of mild admiration Bruce held out his palm for them, and after Bond handed them over he lifted up the carpet on the last step of the nearby spiral staircase and swept them under.
He led Bond into the library and opened up the far wall of bookcases where the nearest Batcave entrance was; the elevator-sized compartment just inside certainly passed for a panic room as long as no one assumed the key panel opened the back wall as well as the front.
After showing him, Bruce just stood there sardonically in response to Bond's expectant look. "I didn't say I'd just go in there and wait for your permission to stop playing hide and seek."
Bond chuckled. "I'll wait with you."
The idea of him as another overqualified tiger stuck in the same boring cage during his boring mission amused Bruce enough to get his concession. Once they were sealed inside, the only light was the red neon glow of the keypad on the wall Bruce leaned against. For a fairly long moment they were both measuring each other, a restlessness in the midst.
Finally Bond said with his slow charisma, "There's more to your story, Mister Wayne."
"Obviously you know more about what's going on than I do," Bruce demurred.
"Not the story." Bond walked across the small cell and leaned into the same wall, resting his hand behind Bruce's shoulder, poised slyly in his space. "Your...story."
Bruce considered this with an aloof, absent lick of his lips. "What, like I'm hiding some...big secret?" With this he reached up to loosen his own tie and collar, satisfied with the subtle way Bond's eyes fixed on the motions as if to see if they declared something. Smirking, he pulled his tie all the way unknotted, slipped it into a loop that he flung around the back of Bond's neck. Testing for agitation, not seeing it, he used it to sling Bond into a hard push of a kiss.
Bond gave a gruff hum against his mouth, betraying immediate flaring desire in how he kissed back and pinned his thigh into Bruce's stance, used his arms and the wall to pull him him. His fingers were in Bruce's hair again, his tongue edging between his lips in brief indulgences, teasing the both of them with not quite enough. He gave a huff of laughing pleasure when Bruce moved for his neck and kissed at it properly this time, long wet bites that brought him into deeper gasps.
But then Bond pulled roughly at Bruce's hair, brought his head up to meet his eyes. Short of breath, they stared each other down. "You're good at this. Too good. But you can't con a con man."
Their proximity slowly fizzled Bruce's nerves as the staring contest ensued, but he never broke face, only cocked a brow. Finally Bond sighed and took a step back, a strange mix of satisfaction and agitation on his hard-lined features.
"It's been a few minutes. I think I'll go see how it's all been handled." Bond was taking a slick little Walther pistol out of his jacket; Bruce's jaw clenched but he opted not to ask him how the hell he got that inside, just punched at the keypad to unlock the cell.
Bond lingered, a leisurely, thoughtful smile on his face now. Instead of leaving he stepped into the opposite back wall, leaned against it. With his ear to the wall, he gave the surface a little series of knocks.
It wasn't all tension but also a weird exhilaration Bruce felt meeting his eyes then, waiting. Bond smirked and finally said, "Keep your secrets, Bruce."
Then Bond was back in his space again, standing in close.
He whispered into his ear, "I like a challenge."
He stepped in a confident pace back into the library, and made a routine check of his gun. He looked over his shoulder.
"Are you coming?" he asked, and was already taking off instead of waiting for an answer.
.