You woke up the next morning to brightly colored curtains and walls. You shot up in bed, startling a creature at your feet to jump up. It was Walter, and you were in your childhood bedroom. The sheets were from when you were a tween, some bright pink floral bedding that your dad had pulled out of the back of the closet. It smelled slightly musty, but Walter quickly fuzzied it up and made it feel like home. He crawled up to you with a yawn and stretch, and you pet his head as you gathered your surroundings. You weren't in someone else's bed. It wasn't dungeon-like. You heard your mom and dad talking out in the living room and heaved a sigh of relief.

Your phone on the bedside table vibrated, and you checked it. 1:38 in the afternoon. You rubbed the sleep out of your eyes and wandered out to the living room, your feet immediately rendering that they were back at home safe and sound. Your parents greeted you with delight as they had hands on the door—your mother had a new walker. She's not that old yet. God. I should have asked to see her scans yesterday. "We'll be gone until dinner, talking with the neighbors. I told Margaret about the anonymous donor and oh my, all the neighbors are gathering to celebrate!" With that she and your father bid you adieu, letting you know there were leftover pancakes from breakfast in the fridge.

Margaret. Mar. You took your phone out of your pocket and sent her a text. You hadn't told her you were leaving yet, but you weren't super close, and it had been on a whim...

Hey, so sorry to let you know this over text but I left back to home yesterday. My mom's health is having some issues so I had to move quickly. How are you doing back there?

After eating some cold blueberry pancakes you slumped over in a dining room chair to think ahead to your mostly empty day. Walter wandered around behind you until he found his food bowl and went to town. If he followed his usual pattern he would curl up in his bed near the couch and go into a food coma for the next few hours. You smiled. What a cutie. You opened your phone again, this time to call your friend Lara. She answered on the very last ring. When you told her you were back in town, she responded sheepishly. "Uh, we thought you wouldn't be in town this early. We wanted to plan a homecoming party for you with your parents but we hadn't gotten around to it." 'We' referred to your friend group: Lara, Gabbi, and Rose. You didn't believe her when she said she was planning a party—you didn't even know if they were really your friends anymore. You'd tried to reach out so many times while you were in Gotham, but you'd only received enough responses to fit on one hand. All short, staccato, to the point. "Miss you!" and "Sounds good!" were the only type of responses your group of friends since high school had left for you since you'd left the city, though you started to wonder if they ever gave you things besides pleasantries at all.

You asked if the group wanted to go get coffee now, and after another hesitation she agreed. "Gab and Rose were just on their way to meet me to go to thrifting, but that can wait." It didn't sound like she wanted to wait, but nonetheless you planned to meet at 2:30. You showered, put on some clean clothes from your luggage, and grabbed your old bike to ride over. You had sold the car you'd gotten senior year of high school to pay for the flight to Gotham two years ago.

At 2:31 you pulled up to the local coffee shop. Sat on a patio table were Lara, Gabbi and Rose, all on their phones with drinks mostly empty when you pulled up. Had they been waiting here? Had they already been here? "Hi, sorry, we couldn't wait and already got our drinks." Lara smiled over her phone and gestured toward a grande chai latte sat across from her. "We got you a chai since you probably don't have a paycheck yet."

You held back a wince. Backhanded. You remembered another reason why you'd left which you'd tried hard to forget: your friends were... callous. They didn't have much of a filter, nor show much interest in anything outside of their own interests. Gabbi and Rose gave subtle waves when you sat down across from them, eyes still glued to their phones. Rose gasped and showed something to Gabbi, who gasped alongside her. "Ugh. That douche."

"How was your time in the big city?" Lara put her phone down while the other two chatted to look at you. At least Lara, however disinterested she could sound, sometimes tried to be an attentive friend. She'd had dreams of going to Harvard Law after you'd both binged Legally Blonde sophomore year of high school, but she'd missed the deadline senior year after a particularly bad bout of the flu. Now she worked a the local flower shop and somehow secured a local exchange student boyfriend, of which they were now three years strong. You put your chin in your elbows and sighed. "It's more dangerous than I thought. And also more boring. I think Gabbi and Rose would really like it there, it's more for partiers I think. I don't know, I never really found my place." You noticed Lara's eyes start to glaze over and shifted the subject. "But uh, I officially turned in my last paper for my degree! So as soon as they send in my certificate through the mail I'm done!" You forced a smile and Lara did the same. "Good for you." Her tone was sickly sweet and you once again hid a wince.

There was an awkward pause for a few moments until Lara cleared her throat and absently asked what your paper was on. Without thinking much of it, you responded. "I was going to do it on Bruce Wayne, but he stopped halfway through the interview."

Gabbi, Rose, and Lara all gasped in unison, and the former threw their phones onto the glass table. "OH MY GOD," Gabbi shrieked. "You've met Bruce Wayne?" By the way their faces lit up it was as if an A-list celebrity had entered the room.

"Did you hook up with him?"

You frowned. "I, I didn't need to sleep with him to get the interview,"

Gabbi, who had asked the question, furiously shook her head. "No," she said with an eye roll. "Because he's a billionaire?" They all stared at you with big, bright eyes. You had their full attention for the first time in your entire friendship. It hurt you, but you tried to hide it and quickly change the subject. "No, I'd never,"

Rose interrupted with a laugh. "No way, I'd do him in a second. Did you see the photos of him shopping today in Gotham? He looks ripped." The three women laughed to themselves and started loudly talking about their fantasies. "I think he likes cowgirl, how could he not? I don't think I could do doggy, he's just too fucking hot. I'd want him to remember my face too, no way."

"He's got to be a dom. He's not letting anyone on top of him."

"He's too jacked to just do missionary. He probably has some crazy sex dungeon."

"Ooh a REAL LIFE CHRISTIAN GREY! Holy fuck Lara I never thought about that!"

Why couldn't they see the flames shooting out of your ears? "He's not even hot, guys," You rolled your eyes and sat back with your arms crossed. "I don't understand the hype. He's... no."

"Come the fuck on, Y/N, he's the hottest celeb right now." Rose was rolling her eyes at you now, while Gabbi glared at you. "What's your problem?"

You threw your hands in the air, exasperated. Your voice rose as the tension in your body became unbearable. He's not hot. He's not cool. He's just Bruce fucking Wayne. He would be no one if it weren't for his fucking mountain of money. "You all couldn't care less about my life. About me, about my school." Hands slammed on the table as you shoved your chair back. They jumped, gasping. "Y/N!" They chastised. It didn't matter, the words were already pouring out of your mouth as unconsciously as vomit. "The first time you all really look at me, pay me any fucking attention, is when you think I might have fucked Bruce Wayne. I'm done."

"Fuck off, everything just has to be about you." Rose snarled. You were already on the way to your bike but spun around at the sound of them getting back to their phones, more furiously now. Nothing with them had ever been anything but themselves. They'd never paid you mind. They kept you in tow because you were too nice. Someone who could always be a shoulder to cry on. Someone to run errands with. Someone to rant to about the other friends in the group.

"You know what?" Fists balled at your sides. Your face was twitching at their audacity, at all the adrenaline shoving through you, making you a live wire. "I did fuck Bruce Wayne. And fuck you."

・。。・・。。・・。。・・。。・

The flash of cameras haunted him as he slammed the door behind him. Alfred had stared at him peculiarly when he walked in, noticing the Dior and Prada bags in his fists. He wanted to press Bruce on what he planned to do with the clothing (the boy never went out unless he was forced to) but decided to wait and watch it all unfold. Unfold it had; as Alfred sought a snack in the kitchen later that evening, Bruce had walked out in a sharp Prada double-breasted suit, adjusting his cufflinks and shaking out his arms before standing in the entryway. "What do you think? Is this a good Bruce Wayne?"

The question struck Alfred, and he hadn't answered for a good few seconds. Why was he acting like Bruce was a character? He went towards that curiosity. "You look like yourself in a suit." To which Bruce responded with a short huff and looked at the ground. "I just, I need more separation from Batman. I don't want anyone able to suspect me." His answer made well the confused storm raging in Alfred's brain. No one had ever recognized Bruce before so he'd never had to grapple with that possibility. Along came someone who had, and now he was outfitted in silhouettes he'd only hoped Bruce would grow into. Tears sprung to his eyes; he could tell the boy noticed, but all Alfred did was nod. He imagined Martha seeing her boy all grown up now, looking sharp and mature. "Makes sense, right then."

Bruce holed up in the basement scribbling into his journal. Got designer clothing today. Hated it. Needed to. Creating more separation from myself and Batman. Another close call would lead to some difficult decisions I don't want to make. I still have work to do here, and I don't want to go into hiding earlier than planned. Suddenly fear and anxiety gripped him. Maybe this could just be a one-off. Bruce Wayne hardly seen again, per usual. He could have just gotten the suits to update his sizing, maybe his butler didn't get his sizing right and he had to do it himself. So he had something to wear to the city hall meetings. No, he couldn't do Alfred like that. He'd just wear it to the next meeting. Change around the Batman suit, make it a full face covering: no lips, eyes behind colored mesh. He could sneak platform wedges into the boots somehow to make him considerably taller, to further throw people off his trail. His eyes heavied with sleep from the weight of the exposure today, but he still needed to go out as Batman.

Before he could, however, he needed to empty the earbuds and contacts he'd worn to shop. They were filled with recordings from earlier, something he'd done in case he needed to look back at anything later. You never knew when crime would strike in Gotham, and sometimes he only had a few seconds to make an ID. He plugged them into their chargers where they immediately began streaming data to his screen. He skimmed through it mindlessly for a minute, hearing nothing besides screaming paparazzi and the clicking of cameras. A clustering of voices from a throng of onlookers he'd passed through, desperately asking for a photo, an autograph, a million dollars. He'd strolled quickly past, paying them little mind beside passing greetings... and a mumble. Rewind.

Mumble.

Rewind.

"Might be a new member in the club."

He could barely make out the gruff, low vocals. The club? Then an even softer, quieter response. Unreachable.

Rewind. Vocal increase. Isolate. Max volume.

"Think we can trust him?"

After that point you had entered the store and were no longer in reach. Which club? Had you heard those voices before, or was this new? The last thing you heard before getting out of reach, disappointingly, was the first man scoffing. "The prince of the city? He's more of a fed than the cops."

Bruce immediately went to his contacts to replay the footage. He roughly matched the timing of the words to men barely in his periphery—but nothing close to making an ID. If it hadn't been for the damn cameras... he could have been more vigilant. Being in public exhausted him more than any single night shift. He started scribbling more musings. No trust with public. Become less of an enigma. A partier? A Yachter? Own room at the clubs? Separation and infiltration. Talk of a club. He reviewed the footage again with neurotic focus.

As far as was possible to tell from the fish eye footage, they were suited. The only type of people who wore suits in downtown Gotham were rich. The type of people who couldn't be touched; the business district was up north, far enough away to not get mugged by partygoers the moment something valuable was visible. They had to be people that couldn't be messed with. The type of people who receive a bad look one day and have your head the next. The clubs. The dinners. These people weren't a part of the mainstream party scene; they were in the club within the club, Penguin types. Bruce groaned and tossed his pencil across the table. He didn't want to do this, and after today he realized he'd have to sacrifice more of Batman than he thought if he would have the energy to get through the day as Bruce Wayne.

He pulled up the Gotham event page and marked down every listed event to his calendar. How was he going to explain his sudden personality shift and movement into the public arena? Questions swirled and dizzied his mind. He could only do so much in his cape; now he had to create another mask. And his first big event would be Gotham University's graduation ceremony.