Chapter Text
Sitting for his 37th birthday with the kids who still lived with him, Bruce couldn’t help but let his thoughts wander as he stared at the headline of the newspaper in front of him. Brucie Wayne was a more difficult facade to keep up as he got older. Scandals had to become progressively more scandalous in order to gain interest, otherwise it was just background noise.
Bruce Wayne slept with a random celebrity? So what? He tripped and knocked over the buffet table? Newer, funny, but gone within a week. He slowly started to pivot his image from party boy to tired dad. Background noise was fine, fewer people watching him, but it was only fine until the press turned their vulture stalking onto his kids.
At first, it wasn’t a big deal, his kids know how to deal with the press. Tim answered questions relevant to WE, and ignored personal ones. Damian just shoved his way past. Then a reporter showed up at Dick’s gym in Bludhaven, taking pictures of him working out and published an op-ed about Dick ‘not taking his work as a cop seriously’ and completely undermining Dick’s goal to reform the BPD. Dick was frustrated by it, the rest of the family got a little laugh, and they moved on, thinking the negative press would fade away.
It stopped being funny when someone got a hold of Damian’s school disciplinary record and published a piece on how he was a threat to the other students, almost resulting in enough push back from other wealthy families to kick him from Gotham Academy. It started being dangerous for their work when Alfred caught a reporter on their property with a lens zoomed on their home. The illegality of it didn’t matter, it was a slap on the wrist for most of these reporters. Brucie Wayne was popular, he sold magazines, but the public wanted juicy scandal Bruce, not tired dad Bruce, and if they couldn’t get juicy scandal Bruce, they were going to find juicy scandals about his kids one way or another.
“What about embezzlement?” Steph suggested over dinner.
“No, Tim or Lucius would be the one more likely to end up in trouble, plus then someone might find the, you know, actual embezzlement to fund Batman,” Dick pointed out.
“Grand Theft Auto?” Cass signed.
“Not long lasting. Father needs something that will shift the media focus for as long as possible,” Damien said. Bruce sighed as he read over the Gotham Gazette. The front page was a zoom in of Tim and Bernard being caught kissing on a date. Something completely normal for teens, but the newspaper had spun an awful story painting Tim as a cheater even though he and Kon had broken up months ago. WE stock had plummeted.
“What about a sugar baby?” Tim suggested, making the table go quiet. The idea made something in Bruce feel a bit queasy. He’d slept with a handful of men and women who were notably younger than him, but he couldn’t stand any of them for longer than the one night. They were just too immature, in the midst of trying to figure themselves out. He had certainly never sought the company of someone around the age of his children. Someone in his life long term? He wanted them to be competent and confident, to not have to teach them, especially if they were younger, else he would feel too much like a father figure for them.
“To make it scandalous, they would have to be young, a dramatic age difference,” Tim speculated, “Perhaps even freshly 18?”
“No,” Bruce said, he was putting his foot down on that. A young adult was tolerable, not really his preference but fine, a teenager was not. “21 or older.”
“21 it is then,” Tim said, pulling out his phone and typing something. Shit, had Bruce just agreed to this plan? It sounded exhausting. That’s the same age as his kids.
“We’ll have to set up a way for them to meet naturally, it would be way more noteworthy if Brucie seemed like he was actually in love than if it was obviously transactional,” Steph added. Tim nodded.
“It would certainly generate more online discussion that way. Lots of arguments and opinions, the algorithms will keep the relationship at the top from the interactions.”
“You will have to find someone who is acceptable at handling public attention,” Damien added, unnecessarily in Bruce’s opinion.
“Oh, or someone who is particularly bad at it! Remember, the goal is drama!” Steph said, grinning like the troll she was.
“If you want to get more drama, you could get someone who looks like Bruce’s typical adoption profile. White, male, black hair, blue eyes. Make it weird,” Duke said before yawning. Bruce felt his eye twitch as Tim nodded and continued typing on his phone. He definitely did not feel comfortable with intentionally cultivating a ‘possible pedophile’ image for his personality, but it would reduce focus on his kids. Hopefully. Or it could go completely wrong and increase attention as reporters try to get their opinions.
“Happy Birthday, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, placing a cupcake with ‘37’ written on it next to his dinner plate. Bruce just sighed as Tim continued talking with Stephanie with the occasional comment from Damien and Duke.
…
“Okay, I think I found someone who would work,” Tim said, pressing ‘Present’ on his powerpoint. The title card read: Bruce’s ideal Sugar Baby. Barbara snickered and nodded.
“Walk me through your process,” she gestured.
“Well, first, we need someone 21 and desperate for money. There’s a lot of people like that in Gotham, but Bruce will have to get along with them well enough to maintain a long term relationship. He gets along best with people who he understands on an intellectual level, so I targeted the student population at Gotham University,” Tim explained, “Specifically the engineering and medical departments because, in the ideal scenario, this person begins helping with our night life in a support role and we really need a highly trained engineer or medical provider. I’m way too busy nowadays to make everything like I used to, and Alfred is getting up there in age.” He clicked and the slide shifted to a picture of Gotham U and a list of names that was clearly cut off.
“Now, there are roughly 3000 undergraduate engineering students, and about 900 undergraduate medical students at GU. So, next, I filtered for those who are 21 since that was the youngest Bruce was willing to go.” The next slide featured a screenshot of a notes app listing off the features Tim was filtering for. “That still left me with close to 1000 prospective students, so I decided to follow Duke’s advice and make it weird. I filtered for male, black hair, blue eyes, stereotypical Bruce adoption bait. This shrank down my search pretty drastically to around 30ish people.”
Tim clicked, and thirty pictures were pulled up, in six rows of five. The pictures, however, were not from the school yearbook. Instead, they were all clearly candid.
“Question: did you stalk all 30?” Barbara asked, grinning. Tim ignored the singular witness to his brilliance.
“I set up a program to analyze all of their internet and computer usage for a month, then used that month to watch each of them independently.” Tim clicked, and one photo now took up the entire screen. It was a young man wearing a worn looking Gotham U sweatshirt typing at a computer while sitting in a cafe. The photo was clearly taken through a window. “At the end of that month, after analyzing their interactions when they thought they were private and observing each potential person for one day, I determined Daniel Fenton to be the best choice.”
“Okay, why?” Barbara asked.
“Daniel is out as bi, matches the profile, currently lives alone in a studio apartment, and seems to have a personality similar to Dick, so he won’t bother B too much.”
“And you don’t think dating someone with a similar personality to his oldest son might be off-putting for Bruce? Especially given how often they fight?” Barbara asked with a raised brow.
“First off, B is more like an Uncle, or a drastically older brother to Dick than his dad, there’s a reason he was never actually adopted and was legally a ward; they only have a 13 year age difference. Jason was the first one Bruce actually adopted as a son,”
“And Daniel is the same age as Jason,” Barbara said with a pointed tone.
“Secondly,” Tim said loudly to drown her out, “while they do argue a lot, they don’t really fight the way Bruce and Jason do. Dick just gets frustrated with Bruce’s struggles with emotional expression. Speaking of which, is Bruce autistic? Has he ever been tested? I know testing wasn’t as common in his generation, but I seriously wouldn’t be surprised. Of course, it could just be an unconscious toxic masculinity worsened by his self-imposed isolation.”
“Tim, stay on topic.”
“Right. Anyway, that wouldn’t be a problem here because Daniel won’t be expecting any sort of emotional support from Bruce. For him, it’ll be transactional so that we can minimize his presence in our life and reduce the risk of him learning about our vigilante identities.”
“What happened to ‘create a romantic relationship’?”
“It’ll appear that way from the outside. We just have to tell Daniel ahead of time.”
“Uh huh, and he’s just going to go along with all this for the money?” Tim shrugged.
“Most people would.”
“And if he comes out to the press about the whole thing?”
“It’d just be more press on him and Bruce, and away from us.”
“And when the news moves away from this?”
“I’ll admit it's a temporary situation, but it should feed the tabloids for at least a year, no matter how it falls. We’ll figure out what next from there.”
“Okay, give me the breakdown. Why is he the best option after one day of stalking?” Barbara asked with a raised eyebrow.
“One day of stalking and a month-long dive into his recent internet usage.” Tim said stiffly. Barbara grimaced.
“Why Daniel over the other twenty-nine possibilities?” Barbara asked. Tim clicked to the next slide, which had bullet points.
“Firstly, once I thought Daniel was the best contender, I spent an extra week doing a deep dive into him. There was a bit of a hiccup, in that his parents work for the DEO engineering department, so I couldn’t really vet them or Daniel’s life before he left them as much as I would have liked because it's all wrapped up in Waller level red tape. But! I was able to determine a couple of things based on court records. First off, Daniel is fiercely loyal to his family and his parents. His godfather, Vlad Masters, has filed CPS charges and tried to adopt Daniel twice. The charges were dropped, the bruising Vlad had seen was a result of Daniel training in martial arts with his mom, and Daniel himself told the judge that he would never want to be adopted by a rich fruitloop.” As Tim explained, he pointed the red laser from his clicker at the bullet points on the slides.
- Parents are vetted by the government, so probably not supervillains (ethics are tbd tho)
- Daniel was offered adoption by a rich man before and turned it down, so he is firmly known for not having any interest in being adopted
- Daniel is trained in martial arts, so he can defend himself to some degree and may be able to train with Bruce
“I figure Bruce would like someone he could train with, so spending time with them can double as training instead of feeling like a waste just for the paparazzi.” Tim explained.
“I don’t think B would gain anything from training with a casual,” Barbara said. Tim grinned and clicked, causing a video to appear. The video started playing, and it was clearly from a roof as Tim was filming Daniel walking down a street. They were off campus, but based on the plastic bag Daniel was carrying he had probably left campus to buy a couple of groceries at a significantly cheaper store than the one on campus. Daniel was wearing his same Gotham U hoodie from the cafe picture and scuffed jeans that were clearly meant for weathering hard work. He was small, Barbara realized as he walked past a light post, and the oversized clothes did not help hide that he looked thin and a bit frail. He was distracted, scrolling on his phone, which was a massive red flag in Gotham.
As he walked past an alley, three much larger men, the typical Gotham goon type, came out laughing with each other, a little bit drunk. They saw Daniel and approached, and Daniel quickly put his phone away. However, Barbara noticed, he did not put it into his hoodie pouch or his pants pockets, both of which would be likely to lead to it being damaged or falling on the ground. Instead, he slipped it up his sleeve. Did he have a cell phone arm band under the hoodie? Better than a hoodie pouch, but she wasn't sure it would be better than a normal jean pocket. She glanced over at Tim quizzically and he grinned before she turned back to the video.
“Good evening gentlemen, can I help you?” Daniel asked as the three men moved around him to box him in.
“Yeah, you can pay for more drinks for me’n my friends,” the leader said, pulling his cigarette from his mouth and blowing smoke towards Daniel. The young man scrunched his nose and waved the smoke away.
“Living the high life I see,” he muttered. The man growled and pulled a gun out from his waistband, turning the safety off.
“Excuse me? Here I was, tryin to be all nice and polite, and you sass me? Give me your damn wallet or I shoot ya.” The camera shook a bit as Tim moved to interfere, but Daniel spoke first.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get it, but could you hold this bag for me for a moment?” Daniel asked, holding out the bag. The thief was obviously going to say no, but it didn’t matter because the point was to shift his attention and to have an excuse for his arm to be near the man. As soon as his eyes shifted from Daniel to the bag, Daniel dropped it and his hand came up to push the gun away from him. Barbara noticed some slight of hand in the motion, where Daniel turned the safety on while shoving the gun away hard. His other hand came up then delivered a swift uppercut that knocked the thief to the ground. The other two men were slow to react, but even after they attacked Daniel they were swiftly knocked out. He fought like a Robin, primarily redirecting the enemy mass and targeted attacks on weak points.
With all three men down, Daniel sighed like the entire thing had just been an annoyance and went to pick up his bag. He checked inside it to make sure his food hadn’t been damaged too much, and then glanced over at the leader who was still awake and staring at him with fear. He walked up to the man and intentionally stepped on the fallen cigarette to put it out.
“You know, all smoking does is make you a sucker,” he said, before flicking the man on the forehead. “Go home dude, and maybe consider not robbing random college students? We’re mostly broke.” The video ended.
“So, he’s actually halfway decent,” Barbara said, impressed. Tim snorted.
“He seems better at fighting than Kate was when she started as Batwoman, so he should be good enough to at least give Bruce a workout.”
“Alright, continue with your presentation.” Tim clicked to the next slide, which had four bullet points instead of three.
- Daniel is independent and competent (Bruce doesn’t have to act in a fatherly role)
- Daniel needs money
- Daniel likes men
- Daniel is good at cooking
“Okay, so, first off, according to teacher emails regarding Daniel, he is fantastic at self-advocacy. When there were some errors regarding his credits, he went through hunting down the right paperwork and signatures to clear it up. Furthermore, he maintains a good grade point average and works hard to ensure that his work is up to standard. This tells me that he is independent and competent, which is a big thing for B. Taking care of his kids is one thing, but taking care of someone who is supposed to be on equal footing with him? He’ll just keep seeing Daniel as another kid if he feels he has to care for him. Furthermore, Daniel seems to actually cook. Alfred is getting up there in years, and could use some help with household chores, so that’s a bit of a bonus that I wasn’t intentionally looking for.”
“It sounds like you’re thinking longer term than just a year or two,” Barbara pointed out. Tim shushed her.
“It’s my job to consider all possibilities! Anyway, continuing on, Vlad, as I mentioned earlier, is paying for Daniel’s education. Daniel hates the man. According to the rudimentary profile I’ve built, I’m very certain that if a legal way to pay for himself came along, that didn’t compromise his ability to study, Daniel would be very likely to take it so that he wouldn’t be reliant on Vlad’s good will anymore. I found repeated texts of Vlad threatening to withdraw Daniel’s funding for various reasons, so I think the money will be a big draw for him. However, Daniel is also very ethical, he tends to frequently participate in online debates that analyze hero actions, and I noticed that the stances that he takes tend to be similar to what B would say for those situations, though perhaps a bit more forgiving than B’s own harsh expectations of heroes.”
“What sorts of things does Vlad push Daniel to do?” Barbara asked with concern. Tim waved her off.
“Nothing illegal. It’s usually things like ‘show up at this event’, ‘give a good review of me when this person calls’, ‘make this delivery for me’, ‘tell your mom I said hello’, stuff like that. Vlad seems to be pretty aware of how far he can push Daniel before he snaps and just makes due with taking on debt instead of gift money.”
“And how did you determine that he liked men?” Barbara asked, knowing she was not going to like the answer.
“Well, the porn he watched tended to be a mix of straight and gay, almost invariably BDSM, and the audio porn he listened to indicates that he likes being submissive in the bedroom. Also, he has a bi flag pinned to his backpack.”
“Of course you tracked his porn. Does Bruce like men?” Tim shrugged.
“Bruce is bi with a preference towards women, but it’s mostly because Bruce won't be with someone bigger or stronger than him because he's a control freak. Danny is built with a very thin frame and is nearly a foot shorter than Bruce, so it should be fine.”
“But doesn’t Bruce like people who are strong?” Barbara asked, mind going to the off-again on-again relationship with Catwoman.
“He’s got this weird dichotomy between his head and his instincts. He prefers to spend time with people who are capable, competent, confident, flirty, etcetera, and he enjoys that in bed too, but he ultimately won’t sleep with someone unless he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s the one in control. I think he used to be riskier, but the incident with Thalia really ramped up his paranoia around his sexual partners. I think that’s also why he never settled down with Selena. He could trust her not to actively hurt him, but he never felt like he was in control of their relationship.”
“You know way too much about your adoptive Dad’s sexual preferences.”
“It comes from being a retired stalker.” Barbara glanced at the slideshow and the distinct pictures that were obviously taken from a building across the street from the subject, but didn’t say anything.
“Okay, analysis time. Pros and Cons. What is the worst case scenario?” Barbara asked.
“Worst case scenario is Danny finds out our identities, and is secretly a villain who either uses our identities to hurt us or outs us to the public with evidence.” Tim reported, clicking to the next slide where he already had a pros/cons list for the plan with his estimated likelihood. “I think that is a low likelihood. I think there is a medium likelihood of him finding out about our double life, but a very low likelihood of him sharing it or acting on it in a negative way. Best case scenario is him finding out and joining as a new family engineer to help build our tools and help Alfred with his duties. Also, as part of that, Bruce and him actually, you know, fall in love, but I figure that’s a pretty low likelihood. I mean, I did my best finding someone Bruce can get along with for more than one date in the 21 year old age bracket, but finding someone he could spend the rest of his life with? There’s no way.”
…
Danny stared at the envelope in his hands, turning it over with a raised eyebrow. It was an invitation to attend a Wayne sponsored engineering conference being held at the Events Center a mile from the campus. He wasn't the only one to receive the invitation of course, all of the incoming class of senior engineering students had received one, but it felt like he was the only one on the fence about going. Danny wasn’t a fan of crowds, but he was probably going to let the peer pressure convince him anyway.
“If you don’t go, I will drive the five hours over there just to soup you,” Tucker threatened over the phone as Danny made himself a simple PB and J. Danny snorted.
“Alright, fine, I’ll go, but I’m going to hate every second of it,” Danny said as he flipped the paper over to see the list of presenters on the back. None of them really stood out to him, and almost all were at least East Coast local. This felt pretty low budget, or rushed, for a Wayne sponsored event. Something about this seemed off, but he wasn’t sure what.
In the end, Danny shrugged. He would deal with it when he needed to.