(L O O K i know this is not even remotely a response to the prompt of ‘bruce wayne gets railed by huge demon dicks’ but also you are all terrible sinners and this is quite frankly a best-case scenario)
It was easy to follow the path of the ratty brown trenchcoat traveling through tuxedos and gowns.
“Wayne! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Bruce had been watching him stomp his way up the stairs, and had made no effort to meet him, standing and sipping at his champagne. “John!” he greeted, too cheerful to ever be genuine. “Glad to see you got your invitation.”
“Yes, I know I wasn’t — what?” Constantine stopped in his tracks with a frown. “What invitation?”
“Your invitation,” Bruce said, gesturing to all assembled. “To the party. Which I assume you accepted, since you’re here. I knew you’d have to show up to one of them, eventually.”
“I don’t…”
The facts were these:
Bruce Wayne had apparently invited John Constantine to a party despite having no reason to believe it was necessary or desired.
‘One of them, eventually’ suggested that he had invited John to many such parties.
A party was often the easiest time to find and corner Bruce Wayne, when he couldn’t go handcuffing anyone to anything with ridiculous bat-shaped handcuffs.
John never expected or waited for invitations to parties.
Bruce could not possibly have been monitoring John’s activities closely enough to know when he ought to invite him to a party.
Therefore:
Bruce Wayne had been sending John Constantine invitations to every party he had thrown in the last six years, for the express purpose of ensuring that John could never have the satisfaction of crashing a posh party uninvited.
The pull at the corner of Bruce’s mouth suggested that he knew that John knew what Bruce had done, and this knowledge of his knowledge pleased him inordinately. He sipped at his champagne.
“Do you know who it is that you were just flirting with?” Constantine asked, returning to his original reason for talking to the man at all.
Bruce’s eyebrow only barely moved higher than the other. “I don’t know that I would say that I was flirting, necessarily,” Bruce said.
“Oh, I know what you look like when you’re flirting,” John reminded him, and Bruce’s eyes flitted away back over the crowd. “You were flirting.” Bruce shrugged. “Did you even catch his name?”
The corners of Bruce’s mouth turned ever-so-slightly downward, a twitch in his brow that wasn’t a furrow. His champagne flute drifted away from his mouth. “I don’t think I did,” he said, and this admission of his oversight was said with the awestruck manner that most people reserved for a glimpse of the divine.
Appropriately enough.
“You’ve been flirting with the Devil,” Constantine informed him, in as blunt of terms as he could manage.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Bruce said. “I haven’t seen Talia in months.”
John huffed, grabbing Bruce by the arm and pulling him toward the railing overlooking the ballroom. “Not the metaphorical devil,” he said. “I mean Lucifer, the Fallen, Prince of Lies, the Dark Lord Satan. You have been flirting with the King of Hell.” He gestured with both arms toward the circle of besotted partygoers surrounding the man to whom Bruce had been speaking.
Bruce scoffed. The man in question looked up from the dance floor. His eyes were all the colors of a sunset, and cherubic golden curls formed a halo around his head. He saw Bruce, and he smiled.
Bruce almost smiled back. It was the beginnings of a smile, a beginning that spoke of an ignoble end, asymmetrical and soft and small.
He stopped. He turned his head away, and his face went a familiar blank shape. He glanced back toward the angelic figure out of the corner of his eye, as if to confirm the effect, before looking away again. He set his empty champagne flute down on the rail.
“That is the Devil,” he repeated for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“King of Hell.”
“Technically retired.”
“What?”
“He just sort of putters around these days,” Constantine admitted.
“He seemed nice,” said Bruce, who now seemed wary of looking toward the party.
“He does tend to.”
Bruce’s gaze drifted back toward Lucifer.
“Wayne. No.”
“Hm?”
“You’re thinking about it. I can tell you’re thinking about it. Theology or philosophy or Stones lyrics. Stop it.”
“I just wish I’d known sooner,” Bruce said. He was watching those blonde curls intently. “I might have had some questions.”
“No. No.” John took Bruce by the shoulders. “That’s how it starts, just an innocent conversation, and then what? Look. I know we’ve had this little rivalry, you and me, over who can stick their dick in the least advisable place, but that is literally, actually Satan. You cannot fuck him. I don’t just mean you shouldn’t, I mean physically, it’s not possible. And even if you could — God knows, if anyone could find a way — it’s still literal, actual Satan we’re talking about here. There are very few things in this world I’m willing to state are absolutely and categorically bad, and one of them is fucking literal, actual Satan.”
Bruce grabbed a champagne flute off the tray of a passing waiter. “Despite what you seem to think, Mr. Constantine,” he said, “I have not yet sunk so far as to need lectures on ethics from you of all people.”
“So that’s the literal, actual, Biblical Devil,” Flash asked.
“You know, I didn’t have you pegged for the slow one,” Constantine said, “but way to buck stereotypes.” He took another drag on his cigarette.
“I just mean, shouldn’t we… be fighting him?”
“You want to try fighting the Devil, you be my guest,” John said, “but I’ve met people who make that their full-time job, and I can’t say I usually get along with them.” He exhaled smoke out his nose. “‘Course, they usually aren’t real good at their jobs, either.”
“We fight bad guys,” Flash said, looking to Wonder Woman for support. “He’s the ultimate, baddest guy, right?”
“Within the Christian faith,” Wonder Woman said, “Satan is considered a personified shorthand for the philosophical concept of evil, yes?” She had a thoughtful hand on her chin.
“Yes,” Flash said.
“If you’re simple, sure,” Constantine said. Wonder Woman looked down at him. “Not that I’m saying you are,” he added. She looked pointedly at his cigarette. He put it out on the sole of his shoe.
“He seems… masculine,” Wonder Woman said.
“I’ve seen worse,” Constantine said.
“And pale.”
“Don’t tell me you’re surprised, love.”
She smiled. John smiled back. She didn’t rebuke him for the term of endearment. “I’m not,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure that everyone noticed.”
Lucifer Morningstar descended from the sky on wings of light. His suit wasn’t even rumpled. It was difficult to look directly at him; he smelled not of smoke but of heat, of lightning, of ozone.
“Consider the matter settled,” he said, his voice soft because he did not need to raise it. It was addressed to everyone, but his eyes were on Batman.
Even the Lightbringer couldn’t touch the impossible black of his cape. He was a figure of void in the light of a sun.
“Do not be so foolish as to think that you can depend on me in the future,” Lucifer added, stepping closer to the Dark Knight with feet that never touched the ground. “Your affairs are your own, and I prefer not to meddle — whatever else you may have been told.” His wings folded, dissipated. They remained as echoes, burnt into mortal vision. “This,” he said, standing too close to an unmoving and silent Batman, “was a rare exception.”
The Flash was by Superman’s side, where he had not been a half-second earlier. “Supes,” he said, speaking faster than ordinary ears could hear, “I need you to be totally honest with me right now.”
Superman had a very good poker face.
“Has Batman been a demon this whole time?”
“Thank you,” Batman said. “We appreciate it.”
“Hmm.” Lucifer cocked his head to the side, looked Batman over, as if there was anything to see through the impenetrable cape draped over the whole of him. “You know how to reach me,” he said finally, before turning on his heel. He didn’t fly away, or disappear; just walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling.
“Supes,” Flash said, “you’re not saying he’s not a demon.”
“I told you not to ask me about his secret identity,” Superman said.
“I feel like you could tell me he wasn’t a demon without it narrowing things down that much,” Flash said.
Zatanna sidled up to Batman. “Spoops.”
“Don’t call me that.”
She rested her elbow on his arm, leaning on him. “I have to ask.”
“No you don’t.”
“I need you to be completely honest with me.”
“No you don’t.”
“Did you lay down such high-quality pipe that the Devil himself felt like he owed you one?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.” At the edge of where his mask ended, he was turning faintly pink.
“Did he call you daddy? Did he say ‘oh my god’? Are those like the same thing for him?”
“Why would I answer that.”
“I get that a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, so if you’ve had infernal dick in your mouth in the last twenty-four hours, just stand there and look stoic.”
“I’m leaving now.”
“That’s not a no!” she called after him.
“Superman,” Flash said, trying to shake him by the shoulder. “Kal. Please. If Batman has been Zee’s demonic familiar this whole time, you have to tell me.”
“Batman,” Superman said, addressing the man in question, “Flash wants to know if you’re a demon.”
Flash squeaked as Batman glowered at him, stopping in the process of storming by to lean closer. “What do you think?”
Constantine shook his head. “And that works?” he asked Wonder Woman, gesturing to the scene.
“Usually,” she said.
“What a bunch of morons. Present company excluded.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Did you lay down such high-quality pipe that the Devil himself felt like he owed you one?”
There are plenty of night, probably the majority, where Bruce is 100% committed to the role of Batman. Just living and breathing the pursuit of justice and crashing through the skylight of the latest hideout and just snarling the villain-of-the-night’s name all “RIDDLER!”
But then there are nights where he’s just so fucking done. He’s still out there giving 110% but radiating exhaustion and exasperation the entire time. The villain’s waiting for his inevitable arrival, all the henchmen’s eyes trained on the windows and the roof, but instead Bruce just slams the door open one-handed, casually knocking out a henchman, and glowers wearily. “What the fuck, Ed?”
That’s hilarious, because how fast would it deflate the Riddler’s preening, over-inflated ego to have his great master plan and clever word play greeted with an exasperated “What the fuck, Ed?”
Commissioner Gordon: If I shine this light into the sky, a man dressed like Dracula shows up.
Internal Affairs Investigator: I’m not sure how that’s a good use of tax doll-
Commissioner Gordon: He brings us lots of inadmissible evidence.
Are you fucking kidding me? You know how this would actually go?
Commissioner Gordon: *slaps roof* You know how much overtime I don’t have to pay on account of this bad boy?
Internal Affairs Investigator: Yeah, but still–
Commissioner Gordon: I just turn it on, and instead of paying a whole precinct time-and-a-half to never see their families, a guy dressed as a bat punches whoever we’re looking for a bunch of times and dumps them in the parking lot.
Internal Affairs Investigator:
That’s not–
Commissioner Gordon:
Sometimes I fire it up just to see who we get. It’s like having a cat that brings you guys with twenty warrants out for their arrest instead of dead birds.
Internal Affairs Investigator:
Okay, but you can’t tell people that. Like, we can’t say it out loud.
Commissioner Gordon:
So I shouldn’t have told the FBI they could borrow it if they ever feel like clearing their most-wanted list?
Someone was in Bruce Wayne’s office, and there was no graceful way to avoid them without making it obvious that he knew they were in there. There was a smell in the air like mulch and roses.
He had no frame of reference for what would constitute a normal amount of things to notice, and so chose to err on the side of oblivious moron.
If there’d been a smell like marzipan dipped in bleach, he might have chosen differently.
“Heya, Mister Wayne,” Harley Quinn greeted, sitting on his desk. She waved as much with her feet as her hands. He closed the door behind him.
Bruce considered his response. Hopefully his momentary indecision with regard to his facial expression could pass for surprise, or confusion, or fear. “Hello, Dr. Quinzel.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not with Jay no more.”
“She’s with me,” Poison Ivy said.
“Hello, Dr. Isley.”
“I really prefer Ivy.”
“Dr. Ivy,” he corrected.
“Doncha love the way he says doctor?” Harley asked Ivy.
“Charming,” Ivy said. She did not sound charmed.
“I told her we oughta come talk to ya,” Harley explained, “on account of you’re a real nice guy an’ all.”
“Thank you?”
“I was just going to kill you,” Ivy added.
“Thank you. For not doing that.”
“Isn’t he just like a puppy?” Harley asked, pressing her hands to her cheeks.
All of the blinds and curtains had been closed. Finn tried to turn on his living room light, and frowned when it didn’t work. He rocked the switch back and forth to no avail, squinting up at the ceiling.
Eyes started to glow in the far corner of the room.
He screeched and dropped his bag on the floor.
“… Bat… man…?” he asked finally. His answer was silence. “Are you… here about the show…? You’re here about the show. We’re — this is all above-the-board, legally speaking.”
Batman stood. At least, that was what Finn assumed happened. The eyes moved from eye level to significantly above that.
“Also legalities aside I think we’ve done a good job of being as respectful as we can within a satirical context,” he added hastily, backing toward the door. “And at this point it’s out of my hands so I couldn’t put a stop to production even if I wanted to. Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t find a way, because you’re Batman, it would just be really nice if you didn’t do that.”
“Convince me.”
It took him a minute to realize that Batman had spoken, to register that they were words in a specific order with a specific meaning. “… convince…? You want the elevator pitch?” Finn wasn’t getting a lot of useful feedback and he was trying really hard not to burst into fear tears and he didn’t understand how anyone could possibly jaywalk in Gotham.
He took a deep breath. “Right. The elevator pitch. I can do that, no problem, not a problem.” He clapped his hands together. “So it’s a show about, uh, Batman — it’s a show about you — not the real you, obviously, it’s — I’m just going to say ‘Batman’, I think you probably get that I mean Batman as an idea and not — anyway.” Finn cleared his throat, tried to swallow the lump in his way.
“The core of the idea is, uh, what if — what if Batman was just a guy. Some guy. No powers, none of, uh—” He flailed his arms into the darkness in an attempt to gesture at whichever part of it was Batman. “Just, you know, a guy. So our story is about, uh, he’s a guy named Johnny Butler — we wanted to name him Johann, you know, for Die Fledermaus, but that seemed a little on-the-nose so we went with Johnny — and he’s this blind guy, and he’s an inventor! He invents, uh, this thing, and it lets him echolocate and he can see all this stuff other people can’t see, and he makes this thing so he can fly, and, you know, other stuff. He lives in Gotham with all these crazy villains, so he decides he’s going to use his inventions to fight them! Because, uh. He can? And Robin is this child prodigy who can talk to birds, he’s sort of, he’s the Marty and Johnny is Doc, or like Penny to Inspector Gadget. That’s. That’s the basics, basically. Is that okay so far?”
“Johnny Butler.”
“Yeah! Yeah. It’s, uh, because of Johann? I already told you that. And how, you know, a batman was like a kind of valet, like a butler, so we were trying to do sort of a pun thing? There’s going to be a lot of puns. I mean, you probably saw the fake intro we made on YouTube? With the theme song? It’s all going to be like that, with the retro aesthetic and camp and the cheesy effects, we’re keeping all of that for the real show. I have this brother, my little brother, he’s really into Batman, uh, you, he collects articles and stuff, and he’s eight, and I wanted to make something that he could watch. So it’s going to be kind of a show for kids, like a funny show — not making fun of you! I can show you a script, if you want.”
“Show me.”
“Yes! Yes sir, absolutely, not a problem, sure.” He bent, and tried to dig through his bag in the dark. “I, uh — here, I think this is it.” He offered a thick stack of paper to the darkness, which took it.
“Rowsdower’s Revenge,” the shadow read.
“Wrong script!” Finn said, snatching the script back. “Sorry, sorry, ignore that, sorry. Here, this one, I think this is the one.” He handed off the other script. “I would turn on the light, but…”
Finn squinted, trying to make out a face in the dark. He would have thought that the light from those weird white eyes would have had more of an impact. But while there was definitely the pale lower half of a face, everything else was just a shape, darker than the rest of the room.
He could make out the sound of pages flipping. And another, different sound. A pen?
“Holy homicide, Batman.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“Yeah, it’s, uh, kind of like a catchphrase? Thing?”
“Batcomputer.”
“Yeah.”
“Bat-o-vision.”
“Y… yeah. It’s like — I mean, you have the batmobile and those batarangs — I don’t know if you actually call them that, but, uh. We thought, you know, wouldn’t it be funny if Batman just puts ‘bat’ in front of everything? As a joke.”
“Batman and Robin consult the giant lighted lucite map of Gotham City, parentheses, labeled.”
“Obviously you don’t actually go around putting labels on everything, it just, uh.” Trying to explain jokes to Batman was the most painful thing he had ever done in his entire life and he wanted to die.
“Johnny Butler is blind.”
“Right.”
“The actor isn’t blind.”
“He… is not.”
“Why.”
“He’s — casting is — that’s not really how we—”
“Fix it.”
“I. Okay.”
“King Tut.”
“We’re trying to get Rami Malek but he’s been pretty busy but I’ll make sure we get someone Egyptian because I can tell it’s important to you.”
“The theme song.”
“We can get a new one!”
“No.” Batman handed the script back, and Finn took it, hands shaking. “Robin likes it.”
“He does? The, the na-na-na-na-na—”
“Stop.”
Finn shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.
“I said Robin likes it.”
“Right.” He looked down at the script in his hands, or tried to. His eyes were adjusting, but still not enough. He brought the paper close to his face, squinting. Had Batman written notes on his script? It smelled like permanent marker. He could barely make out a few crossed out words. “You know, if Robin ever wanted to come by set after we start shooting, we could—”
The lights came on.
“Augh!” Finn shut his eyes, then blinked furiously. His apartment was empty and the window was open. He looked back down at the script, and flipped through it. The notes looked like they’d been left by a monk, taking a break from illuminating Bibles. They sat next to words crossed out and sometimes replaced, saying things like ‘mental illness is not a joke’ and ‘don’t use this word’ and ‘words with more plosives are inherently more humorous’. A note beside the description of Batman’s lair mentioned a carefully labeled ‘Historically Inaccurate But Well-Meaning Tyrannosaurus Rex’.
Finn hit the speed dial on his phone.
“Marco. Dude. You are not going to believe the notes I just got on this — okay, wait, first of all, we need to recast Batman. We need a blind guy. No, like a real blind guy. A tall one. Really tall. And Robin needs more screentime, we’ve got to curry favor with Robin. No, the real Robin. I have never been more serious. Making sure Robin likes this is going to be vital to not getting our asses kicked.”
And yes, okay, my mind initially went to sexy young Gotham Penguin, who actually does sing a torch song at one point:
But let’s face it, it’s EVEN BETTER if it’s this Penguin:
(And now I’m just picturing Scarecrow trying to be equally sultry in the mask. Riddler leaving what he considers to be seductive puzzles for Batman to find. Killer Croc just flexing and being like, “Are you sure you want to take me to jail, sexy? Are you sure there isn’t… something else you want?”)
Welcome to another “my best friend and I send each other headcanons” this time featuring the Batman Lego Movie somehow followed by a discussion of Talia? I don’t know how that happened
There are plenty of night, probably the majority, where Bruce is 100% committed to the role of Batman. Just living and breathing the pursuit of justice and crashing through the skylight of the latest hideout and just snarling the villain-of-the-night’s name all “RIDDLER!”
But then there are nights where he’s just so fucking done. He’s still out there giving 110% but radiating exhaustion and exasperation the entire time. The villain’s waiting for his inevitable arrival, all the henchmen’s eyes trained on the windows and the roof, but instead Bruce just slams the door open one-handed, casually knocking out a henchman, and glowers wearily. “What the fuck, Ed?”
@jerseydevious read Creature of the Night and causally presented to me the idea of Batman being something Dick willed to life to bring justice to his parents’ killer, and i ran 20 miles with it
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