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i.
“Mister Wayne! Mister Wayne, a moment, please!”
The man in question rushes down the street, steadfastly ignoring Paul Kasinsky.
Paul Kasinsky wouldn’t be the Daily Gotham News’ best reporter if he wasn’t persistent. He runs after Gotham’s favorite elusive billionaire, jogging at his side to keep up with the man’s long strides.
“Mister Wayne, you’ve been linked with several actresses and socialites in the past few weeks, any lucky lady in particular catch your eye?”
To his surprise, Bruce Wayne comes to a standstill, right there on the otherwise empty sidewalk in the rain. His brows are furrowed. His hair, dripping wet, clings to his head.
“Why do you reporters always ask me about dating women?” he asks.
Paul, sensing a Story with a capital S, moves in closer, makes sure his microphone catches every word.
“What do you mean, Mister Wayne?”
Wayne swallows, then shrugs, as if to himself. “I’m bisexual. You guys could ask me about the men I date for a change. Wouldn’t make your stories any truer, but at least there’d be some variety.”
Paul has to hold back a gasp. The gears in his head are turning at several hundred rotations a second.
“Mister Wayne, is this your coming out? Would you be willing to sit down with me for an interview?”
“No thanks,” Wayne says and walks away.
Paul is left standing in the pouring rain, too flabbergasted to follow the man.
He shakes himself out of his trance after a minute or two, picking up his phone to call his editor, to make sure they break what might be the biggest story of the month, if not the year –
There’s a text from his editor already waiting for him.
You seen this?
Paul clicks on the attached link, which leads him to Bruce Wayne’s Twitter account. Right there, posted a minute ago, right after Wayne left him standing in the rain, is a tweet.
Bruce Wayne @BruceWayne
stop only asking me about the women i date, reporters of gotham. ever considered that i might date men, too?Bruce Wayne @BruceWayne replied to this tweet:
Bruce Wayne @BruceWayne
i’m bisexual. wanted to get this out there before some random reporter gets a story out of my Big Coming Out.
Paul sighs. So much for breaking the story of the year.
ii.
Batman has just helped save the inhabitants of a burning building.
Batman has just dramatically carried a woman out of the flames as a door frame collapse behind him.
Fiona thinks Batman is the coolest person in the world.
She runs up to where he’s laying the woman down on a stretcher from an ambulance and pulls on his coat.
“Hey, Batman, sir!”
Batman turns, and looms over her, and for a second, Fiona is almost afraid of him. He’s so tall! And so dark! And his eyes are smudged with black under his cowl! But then she sees a little smile on his lips and she grins, wide, showing off her two missing teeth.
“Is that your girlfriend, sir?”
Batman frowns.
“Who?”
Man, this guy is slow. Fiona points at the woman who is being taken care off by a paramedic. “She! Is she your girlfriend? You saved her and it looked like in the movies when the hero saves his girlfriend!”
Batman sighs. There is a crowd gathering around him and Fiona thinks he almost looks uncomfortable, like she sometimes feels uncomfortable when there’s too many kids around her at school.
“No,” Batman says. “She’s not my girlfriend. Not every woman I save is my girlfriend. And not every man I save is my boyfriend, either.”
“Do you have a boyfriend at home, then? Uncle Jake has a boyfriend and he says it’s okay for boys to have boyfriends or girls to have a girlfriend!”
Batman tilts his head. “Yeah, that is okay.”
“So do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you have a boyfriend? Or do you only like girls?”
And then, Batman laughs at her, but Fiona doesn’t feel bad, because it’s a nice laugh, like the laugh her mama laughs when Fiona talks a lot, and mama always says she has to laugh because she loves Fiona so much. Fiona decides she likes Batman very, very much.
“I like boys and girls,” Batman says, still smiling. “And everyone in between.”
The people around them whisper to each other. Fiona stares. “You can do that?”
“Sure,” Batman says. “You take care, okay?”
He pats her on the head, awkwardly, but Fiona doesn’t mind that he’s not as good at it as her mama. He doesn’t have as much practice.
“Bye, Mister Batman,” she calls out, and then she blinks, and when she opens her eyes again, Batman has disappeared.
iii.
It’s late on a Wednesday night, and Carlos Martinez hates Wednesday nights, because nothing good ever happens on a Wednesday night.
Case in point, at three in the morning – which, yes, is is technically Thursday, but Carlos’ shift started on Wednesday evening, so this still counts as Wednesday – he gets a call about a murder scene.
With a sigh, he turns his patrol car around and heads to the address.
Arriving, he finds the scene already bustling with officers collecting evidence and taking photos. There’s a body somewhere in the apartment, and Carlos starts looking for someone to fill him in on what they know already when he spots the Bat in a corner of the room, lurking as usual.
“Hey, bat!” he shouts.
The Bat does his very best at ignoring him.
Carlos makes his way over to the Bat’s corner.
“Long time no see,” he says, which is a lie, because they saw each other just two nights ago at another crime scene.
“We saw each other just two nights ago at another crime scene,” the Bat deadpans, as if he was reading Carlos’ mind, which, is that something he can do? Carlos tries very much not to think any possible incriminating thoughts, just in case.
He decides to switch the topic to something that will distract the Bat from possibly reading his thoughts.
“Hey, so, is Superman your boyfriend?”
The Bat stares at him with a blank expression – even blanker than usual, if that is even possible.
“It’s just that I read in the Daily Gotham News that you’re bisexual, and some of us have been wondering if you and that outer space hunk have a thing going on…” Carlos trails off.
The Bat doesn’t move a muscle, just keeps scowling at Carlos.
“Listen, I won’t tell anyone if you are, I can keep a secret, I promise.”
The Bat stares at Carlos.
Carlos stares at the Bat.
The Bat stares at Carlos.
“So are you –”
“No.”
iv.
“Superman is an alien. He doesn’t have the same gender norms as we do. Obviously he’s nonbinary.”
Aline squints up at her best friend on the couch from where she’s spread out on the floor of the living room. “He grew up on earth! Earth has gender norms. And also, we don’t know if aliens don’t just have different kinds of gender norms.”
Noa grins. “Nope. All aliens are nonbinary.”
“You can’t just decide that everyone is nonbinary just because you’re nonbinary.”
“Sure I can!”
Aline huffs. “Yeah, right, next thing you tell me Bruce Wayne is nonbinary, too.”
Max perks up on his bean bag. “Oh man, now that man has some great gender. Very stealable.”
Noa nods in agreement. “Very stealable. One of these days I’m gonna break into Wayne Manor and steal Bruce Wayne’s gender.”
“Man, can you imagine,” Aline laughs despite herself. “Going up to Bruce fucking Wayne like, hi, sir, can I please have some gender? I’d give anything to see the look on his face.”
“I feel like he’s either incredibly confused about genderqueerness or knows way too much about it,” Noa says, pursing their lips. “There’s no in-between. Zero interest or total hyperfixation, the autistic way.”
“Again,” Aline says, “You can’t just decide that everyone is autistic just because you’re autistic.”
Noa winks at her. “Sure I can!”
“Let’s just ask him,” Max says, pulling out his phone. “He’s semi-active on twitter, right?”
“Great idea!” Noa exclaims.
Aline drops her head back against the carpet, staring up at the ceiling.
There’s a lull in conversation, and then it picks up again as they switch to the topic of outfits that they are going to wear to this year’s Gotham Pride Parade.
“And if I wear my black skirt with that,” Max is saying, and then stops mid-sentence as his phone vibrates next to him.
He stares at the screen.
“Holy shit, guys. Check Twitter.”
Aline grabs her own phone and opens Twitter, seeing Max’ tweet right at the top of her timeline, and responding to the tweet –
Gax (Gay Max) @supermax11
yo @BruceWayne bestie whats ur gender. what are ur pronouns. bestie pls answerBruce Wayne @BruceWayne replied to this tweet:
Bruce Wayne @BruceWayne
he/they… bestie?Bruce Wayne @BruceWayne replied to this tweet:
Bruce Wayne @BruceWayne
also i thought people knew i was trans???
Max is still staring at his phone. Noa guffaws.
“Oh, he has the gender all right,” Aline says.
“No shit,” Noa wheezes out between laughs.
“Trans bisexual he/they icon Bruce Wayne,” Max manages to say. “Who’d’ve thunk.”
“Can’t believe this just happened,” Aline says.
Max is still staring into the void as he says, “I can’t believe Bruce Wayne just called me bestie.”
v.
The Gotham Pride Parade is loud.
It’s loud, and crowded, and hot, and Fern feels like they can’t breathe.
She’s lost her friends some unknown number of minutes ago among the mass of people undulating through Gotham’s streets, for once making the city so very, very colorful.
It’s all too much.
Fern presses herself against a brick wall in a cramped alley, trying to catch their breath, trying to think of a regular rhythm when their heart is thumping so very irregularly, when she can hear at least three different songs playing over speakers of different wagons.
There’s not enough air, not enough space, and the walls of the alley seem to close in on Fern –
“Breathe with me,” a deep voice says.
Fern doesn’t look up, stays curled up against the safety of the sun-warm stone.
“Come on,” the voice says, and she can vaguely make out a figure sitting in front of her, not quite close enough to touch them. The voice begins to count, and breathe audibly, and Fern matches it as well as she can, tries to follow the ebb and flow until they finally, finally, they feel like they can breathe again.
She blinks. Looks up at the figure, and their eyes widen when they see a hunched over person clad in all-black, cowl and all.
“You’re –”, Fern wheezes out, “you’re Batman!”
The figure’s lips quirk upwards in an appropriation of a smile.
“How are you feeling?” fucking Batman asks Fern.
Fern stares some more, then catches herself. “Okay, I guess,” they say.
Batman squints. “You need some water? Or to call someone?”
Fern shakes their head. “Thanks, I’ve got my phone. I’ll text my friends and they’ll come here”
“I’ll wait with you,” Batman says, then trails off, obviously at a loss of what to say.
“I’m Fern,” Fern says after they finish texting their friends where to find them. “I use she/they pronouns.” She crosses her fingers behind her back, hoping that this won’t lead to an onslaught of questions about gender identity.
Batman just nods. “I’m Batman,” he says. “He/him pronouns.”
“What are you doing at Pride?” Fern asks.
Batman shrugs, looking almost self-deprecating. “To look out for people like you.” A pause, then, “And because I’m part of the community.”
Fern remembers the uproar he caused a few weeks ago when he told some child in front of a crowd that he liked boys and girls, or something.
“Right. So,” they ask, “are you bi?”
Batman nods. Fern grins. “Same,” she says, and olds up her hand for a high-five. Batman just stares at the hand, and then back at Fern's face. Fern drops the hand again and instead checks her phone. Their friends should be here any moment, now.
They consider Batman in his black getup, so different from the rest of the parade – with the exception of some leather daddies, of course.
“Here,” she says, and takes one of the dozens of pins off her denim jacket and pins it to his chest. The colors of the bisexual flag stand out against the black material, and Fern thinks it looks great.
Batman looks down at the pin, touches it for a brief moment, then looks back at Fern.
“Thank you,” he says, and Fern grins.
“You’re welcome.”
Their friends chose that moment to appear, fussing and chatting and, after ensuring that she’s okay, dragging her back into the crowd. When Fern throws a last glance into the alley, Batman is nowhere to be seen.
The rest of the day takes place without any further incidents. When she gets home that evening and opens Twitter, the first thing she sees is a selfie someone took with Batman, grinning widely next to the blank-faced vigilante.
Fern zooms in on the picture. Batman’s chest is full of pins in every imaginable combination of colors under the sun, with slogans and cartoon faces and countless rainbows.
Fern grins.
vi.
Bruce Wayne turns on the TV just in time for the evening news.
He towels his hair dry as he watches the news anchor giving a summary of the day’s events, as she reports on crimes, on good news, on international news.
Towards the end of the program, Bruce is barely listening until something catches their attention.
“– and after Batman appeared at Gotham City’s Pride Parade last week,” the news anchor is saying, “many are asking themselves once again about the identity of the vigilante.”
Bruce steps closer to the the TV screen.
“We don’t have any information on his identity, but we might have an important clue as to who Gotham’s most secretive celebrity is.”
Bruce frowns as the station switches to an image of a different reporter.
“That’s right, Carol,” the man says. “While we don’t technically know anything about Batman, he has revealed one personal tidbit about himself; recently, he was filmed telling a young girl that he liked both boys and girls – and his appearance at last week’s pride parade only hammer the point home that he is, in fact, bisexual.”
Bruce doesn’t quite get what all this has to do with Batman’s secret identity and he thinks to himself that there are more sexualities who are attracted to several genders than just bisexuality, but they keep watching.
The reporter continues, “In other Gotham news, reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne recently stated that he, too, is bisexual, and that he uses he/they pronouns.”
Bruce’s heartbeat quickens. There is no way that they made a connection like this, that this is what reveals his secret identity –
“So really, Carol,” the reporter says over the rush of blood in Bruce’s ears, “I’m going to ask the question that everyone at home is thinking.”
Bruce freezes.
“Is Batman dating Bruce Wayne?”
Bruce Wayne laughs. Now that’s a theory they haven’t heard yet. He turns off the TV as the reporter goes on about his theory, finishes toweling his hair dry and throws himself into his bed face-first.
They’re asleep within seconds.