lady_bug_kay | Batfic: Traffic in the Sky (3/?) (Bruce/Dick)

(THE FIC FORMERLY KNOWN AS "JOINING FORCES")

Title: Traffic in the Sky - Part 3/?
Author: ladybugkay
Fandom: AU DCU/Nolan 'verse (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight)
Pairing: Bruce/Dick
Rating: PG-13 (this part); up to NC-17 in later parts
Word Count: 1780 (this part)
Timeline: Several months after the events of TDK.
Summary: What happens when a new officer joins Gotham PD and Batman encounters a stranger on the rooftops of his city?
Disclaimer: DC and Christopher Nolan and who knows how many others own the rights. This is purely for fun and intends no copyright infringements.
A/N: Sorry for the long wait for this part. I have no idea how long this fic will turn out to be, but projecting ahead, loosely, I'm guessing maybe 10 parts. Maybe? Give or take a few parts? LOL. Oh, and the new title is from Jack Johnson's song of the same name.

Part One: Salutations
Part Two: Night Shifts

Part Three: Judgment Calls

Renee Montoya is a good officer. She’s not just good at her job, she’s a good officer. Dick can tell. He was a decent judge of character even back when he was just a boy under the bigtop, and everything he’s lived through since then has done nothing but hone it; not to mention he’s been around his fair share of dirty cops, so he knows how to spot one by now.

Plus, she looks like she could kick his ass – if Dick were only what he is pretending to be – and that automatically raises her in his estimation. If he were straight, he might even ask her out, regardless of the few extra years she has on him. He likes her.

“Kid! Over here!”

Dick winces. Hard.

There is that, however. In fact, everyone keeps calling him ‘kid,’ here, and it’s beginning to grate on his nerves. It’s been years since he’s felt as young as the people in this city seem to think he is, and he’s worked long and hard not to be as green as they assume him to be. Young he may be, and yes, something in his face tends to call out to the elderly to pinch his cheeks – both sets, sometimes – but he is still an officer of the law and should be treated accordingly.

Yet for all that, Dick might as well be straight out of 21 Jump Street with the way the cops in this department treat him. It’s demeaning, discouraging, and disappointing, and if he could think of any other appropriate words beginning with the letter ‘d,’ he’s pretty sure it would be those, too.

He misses Amy.

Captain Amy Rohrbach. She made work in the most corrupt police department in the country bearable, and even, on occasion, fun. Not only did she refuse to take any bullshit from anyone, but she managed to keep a surprising number of dirty cops toeing a little closer to the right side of the line, and Dick respects her more than almost anyone he knows, even if she did try to prevent him from leaving the BPD. Dick had put in for a transfer to Gotham shortly before the Joker emerged on the scene, but for some unspecified reason, it hadn’t come through until recently. He suspects Amy of having more than a little to do with the delay, but he can’t confirm it – she’s good that way.

She hadn’t been happy to lose the only honest cop under her command, and she had let him know so in no uncertain terms.

Amy could be a hard ass, but at least she respected him, which is more than he can say for most of the cops in this department, so far.

“Look, kid. I’m not calling for you just to hear the sound of my own voice. I mean, it’s a very nice voice and all, and if you ask politely, I might consider giving you a rendition of, oh, say, ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’ but right now, get your rookie ass over here and help me with these assignments.”

Dick gets his decidedly non-rookie ass over there and brings a second cup of coffee as a peace offering.

Yeah, he misses Amy. A lot.

Amy, however, is back in Bludhaven, and Dick is in Gotham, which is, despite some misgivings, exactly where he wants to be.

Even if he hasn’t seen so much as the corner of the Batman’s cape since he got here.

In terms of actual, measurable time, Bruce hasn’t been doing this that long. Some days, it might feel as if he has never done anything else, and some days, as if he will do it forever and never get it right, but really, it isn’t so long ago that he was in strange lands learning strange things, or even since he was an angry boy with delusions of revenge consuming his every waking thought and nighttime dream. Batman isn’t all he has ever been, no matter how much it seems that way, these days.

Still, his experiences as the Batman have been remarkably vivid, varied, and unquestionably atypical for the average Gotham citizen, even taking into account that Bruce Wayne could never be considered average under any criteria.

So it isn’t the most unusual thing Bruce has seen in the last few years, nor would it be truthful to say that it is the last thing he would have expected to see. Yet he wouldn’t say finding another costumed individual roaming the rooftops at night is precisely typical, either.

Part of the reason he enjoys it up here is that even un-costumed individuals don’t frequent the roofs of Gotham, let alone in the blackest hours of the night. The silence, brief as it may be on most nights, is always welcome, and something new in Gotham is virtually guaranteed to lead to some kind of criminal activity and require the Batman’s intervention.

Bruce has learned that much, by now.

Clearly, the situation calls for a little reconnaissance, so he keeps to the shadows, following the man from the other side of the street, keeping a few buildings behind him.

Currently moving through territory that has belonged solely to Batman, this man defies any expectation Bruce could have, making his way from building to building, executing a series of movements consisting of effortless, reckless leaps and flips and runs, interspersed with bizarre stops and slowly changing poses.

It isn’t just the man’s presence or his unusual movement that holds Bruce’s attention, however; it’s also the costume itself. Solid black with the exception of a single blue stripe cutting a dramatic v-shape down his chest and extending along the length of each arm, it clings almost obscenely to the man’s body. Bruce experiences a moment of surreal horror at the thought that it must be spandex or something very like in order to hug the curves and angles of that lean body like the most expensive race car in the world of professional driving.

Bruce likes things that go fast – speed is a thrill for him, he admits – but spandex in Gotham is not so much a crime as an invitation for violence. This is not L.A., nor is it the 1980s, and as much as Bruce can appreciate the body that is shown to best advantage with this sartorial choice, he can’t understand what purpose it serves for running rooftops in the middle of the night.

He doesn’t understand at all.

Though, he is intrigued.

Bruce watches closely for long minutes, puzzling over the odd behaviour – the almost joyous abandon evident in the tumbling passes across roofs, the sudden stops and cautious, tentative poses at the edges, the leaps and swinging launches from one building to the next – until finally it all clicks and he wonders why it took him so long to comprehend. He eases away from the wall that has been concealing him, preparing to swing across the street and confront the man, when Alfred calls with news of a tripped alarm at the First National Bank of Gotham.

Sometimes he wonders if it might not be smarter to keep banks out of this city altogether.

Bruce spares a quick glance over his shoulder as he fires his jumpline in the opposite direction, but he isn’t concerned by the delayed confrontation. It’s almost a guarantee that the man will be out again tomorrow night, and so far, he hasn’t done anything obviously illegal. The odds are still fairly good that he will turn out to be a criminal, most likely an up-and-comer interested in assuming the role of Batman’s latest nemesis.

It’s the way Bruce’s luck runs, and in his experience, it is rare for individuals who disguise their identities to have honourable intentions.

Even the Batman doesn’t adhere to all the laws of the land.

Dick knew something was going to happen. Everybody should have known something was going to happen. Gotham is, in its own way, predictable, particularly when it comes to attacks on elected public officials, and yet those same authority figures ignore that truth repeatedly and continue to plan events like this one, anyway.

It’s possible they deserve at least a small portion of the inevitable terror accompanying such events, Dick thinks, though not the violence itself.

He has no patience for willfully blind people, which is why, when everything goes to hell, the only thing he feels is a kind of wry resignation.

The shot is loud over the sounds of the mayor’s speech, but the screams that come after it are louder still.

“Get down! The mayor! Cover the mayor!”

“Oh, my god!”

“Inside! Get him inside.”

“—re did the shot come from? Did you see?”

“Over there. It came from—”

“Shit. He’s bleeding.”

“They hit him? Where did they hit him?”

“It’s not him; it’s—”

“Are you alright? Where were you hit?”

It takes a moment, once they’re inside the nearest building, for things to calm down enough to distinguish who is saying what, and even then Dick doesn’t realize they’re talking about him until someone presses down on his arm. He looks down and finds a tear in his uniform and blood smeared over what he can see of his upper arm under the other officer’s hand. Somehow, it isn’t a surprise.

After a little bit of convincing, he gets the guy to lift his hand away, and when Dick raises his arm for a closer look at the wound, he can’t help but laugh. “It just grazed me. I’m fine. I didn’t even feel it.”

“He’s in shock,” someone whispers.

Dick manages to make the eye-roll subtle and very brief, but he can’t quite prevent it entirely. “I’m not in shock. I’m fine, really. A band-aid or two and I’ll be good as new.”

“We need to get you to the hospital.”

“Somebody call an ambulance.”

Is anyone even listening to him? Dick tries very hard to take their concerns seriously, because caution isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when these guys have experienced more than enough violence in this city.

“I’m fine,” he says firmly. “I don’t need a hospital, an ambulance, or a first-aid kit. I don’t need even so much as a Tylenol.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m very sure.” He looks each one of them in the eye until he’s sure they understand him, because this is verging on the ridiculous.

“Okay; that’s good.”

“Yeah. At least it’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. Somebody get the mayor out of here.”

Well, Dick thinks, as he wipes his bloody hand on his ruined sleeve. Wasn’t that fun?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bradygirl_12

Hi, sweetie! I'm going to read this in a few minutes, but it looks like you use RTE. Since the 'change' for RTE by LJ, the cuts don't work. Your story is showing in full on your main entry page under the cut. You're stuck using HTML for now.

I'll comment after I see whether or not you're changing this! I don't want my brilliant comments to be lost. ;)

From:

this is for the quiet screamers

Batfic: Traffic in the Sky (3/?) (Bruce/Dick)

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