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Bruce tried to smother the smug feeling in his chest as he crept along the beams that ran along the supposedly abandoned warehouse. Pride was always a danger in Bruce’s line of work, where underestimating any opponent could easily result in becoming a bat-shaped smear on the pavement.
But he couldn’t deny a certain sense of satisfaction in having solved Edward’s riddle before it had been given to him. Nygma had chosen a bad time to break out of Arkham; not only was Tim in town to help with patrols while on break from university, Bruce hadn’t been called away on Justice League business for a full month. For once, he’d had almost a full week he could devote to watching Gotham’s underworld for the Riddler’s next move.
Eventually he’d hit paydirt. A sudden change to the construction company building a new exhibit at the Gotham Zoo. A missing cleaning worker who had been employed by the city’s Transit Authority to clean subway cars. A dockworker who’d been a little too generous in buying rounds for everyone at one of the city’s shadier dive bars. One clue had led to another, and eventually the trail had taken him to the old industrial district.
The problem with Nygma’s schemes is that they always required people — a lot of people, given how convoluted they tended to be. Setting up a citywide scavenger hunt took prep work, and there was only so much a man could do to cover his tracks when building death traps that provided deliberate clues to his location.
It didn’t help that Bruce knew what to look for. He still had nightmares about how badly he’d failed in preventing Riddler’s “Zero Year.” But back then, Nygma had been the devil he didn’t know; he’d had years to plot and build the networks needed to enable his takeover, and no one had known the threat growing right beneath their nose.
It had bothered Nygma, the anonymity. He’d never said as much, not to a therapist and certainly not to Batman. But there were only so many times a man could plaster his face across a screen the size of a building before you suspected a pathological need for attention. Still, Bruce wondered if Riddler occasionally missed the freedom of operation his lack of status had provided him. Everytime he escaped from Arkham he had to rebuild the resources that had been stripped away by the GCPD, all while looking over his shoulder for a Bat. If Bruce had his way, no scheme of Edward’s would ever live up to his first.
This one wouldn’t, certainly. Bruce allowed himself a smirk as he heard the distinctive sound of an annoyed Riddler coming from the foreman’s office. The walls of the platform room were built to protect a supervisor from the eyes of his workers below, not defend from invaders above. Bruce crept in through a ventilation opening near the office’s ceiling.
Riddler was below, pacing around the room and muttering in frustration. Bruce could guess what was agitating him; he’d taken care of the crew placing bombs along Gotham’s east docks on his way here, not wanting Nygma to have them as potential leverage during their eventual confrontation.
He listened as Nygma hurled abuse into his phone, unsubtly questioning the intelligence of the hired help who had somehow not yet succeeded in setting up the explosives. In reality, the henchmen had done a perfectly satisfactory job; Damian had just been deactivating them for the last hour. But Bruce doubted they would take offense at Riddler’s mischaracterization of their work, given that they were unconscious and tied up on the docks. Nygma was currently talking to Damian, who was doing his best impression of a forty five year old criminal three times his size. Given that the boy could trick the Batcave’s voice sensors into thinking he was Bruce, it was a pretty convincing impression.
“Just fix it, Jacobs!” Riddler hissed, running a frustrated hand through the back of his red hair. “Or I’ll be sending a package of my own to your sister in Bludhaven. Rest assured that I will not fumble the armament.”
He hung up before Damian could reply. For a moment Bruce thought Nygma was going to throw the phone into the wall. Instead, the man took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, a very purposeful attempt to calm himself. He walked over to the computers set up against the far wall, sinking down in a swivel chair and setting his phone down gingerly on the console.
Bruce leaned forward, intrigued. Nygma’s hardware was always wiped clean before Batman reached the end of whatever riddle led him to Edward; on the rare occasion that Bruce dropped by unexpectedly, like tonight, Riddler’s data had a tendency to erase itself before Bruce could break through the encryption. He’d never had the opportunity to watch Edward access his own files, however. Even a brief glimpse into the Riddler’s criminal network could go a long way in helping Bruce strip Nygma of all his resources, not just the surface level bank accounts and data caches Gordon pecked at whenever Riddle was captured.
Nygma turned on the monitors. “One, eater, morning, casket, sacks, displays,” he said, and Bruce watched as the computer system opened up before him. He memorized Nygma’s words, but doubted that giving the same statement in the same order, even spoken in Edward’s voice, would have the same results. Riddler was too protective of his secrets to rely on set passwords and voice recognition.
Riddler’s desktop sprawled across several monitors, a web of text and images that was almost dizzying to examine. It reminded Bruce of that cat’s cradle that Nygma had left behind in his office at Wayne enterprises, a nonsensical tangle of colored string and post-it notes that had doubtlessly infuriated Bruce’s Uncle Philip when Edward had been his chief advisor.
The doctors at Arkham had been fascinated by Riddler’s web, theorizing endlessly about every nonsensical phrase or photograph strung from his walls. Nygma was more of a curiosity back then, their singular colorful inmate instead of one of many. Bruce had cared considerably less than them about untangling the string, mostly because he thought that 3/4 of it was complete bullshit. He’d been mildly interested until he’d seen the balloon labeled “attractiveness of secretaries.” Whatever Nygma’s real organization system was, it was pointedly buried underneath miles of open mockery for anyone who dared to dig.
Bruce assumed the same was true for the almost epilepsy inducing display of folders, programs, and aggregated web content spread across Riddler’s monitors. Nygma moused over to a small icon on the bottom left of the third monitor. It was labeled “ouroboros,” which seemed promisingly melodramatic. Bruce lifted a hand to turn on the recording function of his cowl lenses as Nygma opened the folder.
He made sure to get a look at all the filenames in quick succession: Office, Clever, Jacket, Redhead, Name, Faceless. Nygma stared at them for a while, mousing between them indecisively as he leaned back in his chair. Eventually he seemed to come to a decision, selecting “Redhead.” A video file opened; Nygma hit a button and it multiplied, going fullscreen on every monitor in the room.
“Is it on?”
Bruce’s heart skipped a beat. There was no visual yet, just a dark screen, but the voice was unmistakable.
It was his.
Not Batman’s, the harsher baritone that was translated through the voice modulator in his cowl. It was Bruce Wayne’s. He heard it enough on television or radio to recognize it, even if it was different to how he sounded in his own head. The playboy affectation made it even stranger. Dick had described it once as sounding like he was always on the verge of laughing, which Bruce supposed was accurate enough, even if it raised unsavory comparisons.
“Not yet,” came the reply, and suddenly Bruce knew exactly what he was watching.
“Wait,” Jackie Vaseux continued. “Yes? No. Yes.”
“Maybe I should have sprung for a camera crew,” Bruce said, and Jackie laughed.
“Noooo, I’ve done these before, I promise,” she said. “Your camera is just too fancy. What does it need all these settings for, anyway?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” There was a shifting sound from behind the camera. “I bought it an hour ago.”
“You mean you sent your butler to buy it an hour ago.”
“I know you’re joking, but I feel the need to clarify that I would not have involved my butler in this process.” Bruce’s voice was coming from the front of the camera now, closer to the screen.
“The butler who just came upstairs to ask us if we needed refreshments like ten minutes ago?”
Bruce huffed. “That’s not getting involved in the process,” he said. “You’re a guest in his house. He was being considerate.”
“Maybe I should go downstairs and see if he can get the camera working,” Jackie teased.
“Oh, for—”
There was a twisting sound, and suddenly the pitch black of the screens were replaced with pale skin and blue eyes.
“You had the lens cap on,” Bruce said, backing away from the camera. He held up the dark circle as if to prove his statement, then tossed it dismissively off screen.
Jackie giggled. “Oops. Well. While I have you here...”
Bruce raised an eyebrow at her. The camera didn’t show it, but the Bruce sitting in the rafters remembered the significant glance she’d given him in return. On the screen, he obliged her; quickly unbuttoning his white dress shirt, he pulled it off and tossed it on a chair near the bed.
“Oh, come on,” she protested. “I know you’ve done these before. A little slower for me, please?”
It earned her an eye roll, but Bruce moved more leisurely when removing his pants. He teased them down his legs, then swung the pair in the air a few times before tossing them on the floor.
“Thank you,” Jackie said. “Very sexy, totally not overly performative.”
Bruce grinned. “I live to serve,” he said, raising his arms in a mock display of his mostly-naked body. He was wearing black mesh briefs, the same kind he wore under the batsuit. They were the only kind he owned, half because he didn’t see the need for variety and half because he never knew when he’d have to get in the suit anyway.
The rest of the body on the screen was bare; clear, unscarred skin, pale from lack of sunlight. It looked nothing like how Bruce’s body looked now, in the shadows and underneath the kevlar. He’d acquired a considerable number of wounds, burns, blemishes and bodily traumas since his last visit to his plastic surgeon five months ago. He was about due for a return visit, especially with the fast approach of summer.
He’d been planning on making another one of these videos after his next appointment. He always did. It seemed like a waste not to; the window between cosmetic surgery and his next suspicious scar was typically quite brief, and there was nothing that implied a life of hedonism and debauchery quite as efficiently as an “accidentally” leaked sex tape.
At this point he had quite the filmography — six exactly, which might account for the other five files in “ouroboros.” They were all with different women, a detail intended to reinforce assumptions about how much Bruce Wayne slept around. Jackie had been an intuitive choice. An heiress, not unlike him, but an enterprising media maven who had strategically released videos of her own in the past. He’d started dating her under the assumption that she might be interested in a repeat performance, especially with someone of his status and reputation.
He’d been proven right when he’d subtly broached the topic on their second date, to enthusiastic reception. They’d planned out the details over the next couple of days, a casual and refreshingly business-minded affair. Most of the dialogue had been improvised, but the general atmosphere had been laid out in advance. The jokes, the “mistakes,” the implied comfortable intimacy — it was all Jackie’s preferred style, which had suited Bruce fine, even if it wasn’t what he would have scripted out on his own.
As a result, there wasn’t much genuine insight into Bruce Wayne that Riddler could glean from the video. Given Nygma’s intuitive skill, he might have derived the level of pageantry present, but it wasn’t like that would have been news to the criminal. He was already under the impression that Bruce was a crazed sociopath who disguised his dedication to eradicating crime with a harmless, hedonistic exterior (which Bruce had to admit wasn’t the least accurate description of his psyche, if somewhat mean spirited).
Riddler had expressed as much the last time he was in Wayne Manor, not long after a fight with Joker had left Bruce with serious damage to his memory. Nygma had been angry at Bruce for seemingly providing Batman with the resources to ruin his life, but he’d been furious that Bruce’s amnesia had provided him with the opportunity for a happy ending.
Of course, Nygma needn't have worried. Bruce had recovered his memories eventually, along with the knowledge that Riddler’s theory about Bruce Wayne indulging his vigilante fantasies by funding Batman had been... a little off. Nygma hadn’t come after the Wayne heir since then, when Bruce was able to defeat him through Alfred’s knowledge of the Manor’s defense systems. The lack of attacks since then had always seemed odd to him, given the vitriol with which Riddler had accused Bruce of paying Batman to break him.
The obsession clearly hadn’t been one off, either. Once Bruce had regained his memories, he’d realized that some of the facts about his life that Nygma had taunted him with were not public knowledge, especially the incident in high school when he’d set his math teacher’s lawn on fire. The teacher had known it was Bruce — that had been the entire point — but he’d never mentioned Bruce’s name to the police, just quietly stopped humiliating the quieter students in his class. For Nygma to have known about the incident, he would either need to have already been watching Bruce when they were both teenagers, or had a lot of time in recent years in which to dig.
He’d theorized that the return of Batman had ended Riddler’s interest in Bruce Wayne — after all, the villain had only sought out Bruce for revenge when Gotham thought the Dark Knight was dead. He’d stayed vigilant for any sign of Nygma’s interest in his public persona, however. Not just out of concern for his loved ones, but in the interest of maintaining his secret identity. Nygma’s version of events was far closer to reality than the casual corporate sponsorship Wayne Enterprises had presented.
This seemed to be a sign that Riddler was resuming his crusade against Bruce Wayne, though Bruce couldn’t imagine what useful information he hoped to find in these transparent publicity stunts. If Nygma was looking for an “in” to his personal life, it seemed considerably more obvious to get to Bruce through his many children, rather than a woman he hadn’t gone on a date with in three years.
He supposed he could understand the interest in thoroughness. On occasion Bruce needed to examine similarly explicit material for his own investigations, which he approached with the same detached professionalism he’d employed in making the video Nygma was watching now. But if this was all Nygma was going to do while he was watching, then Bruce’s time would probably be better served attempting to access Riddler’s systems while he was distracted.
The Bruce on the screens removed his underwear, revealing a circumcised member of the length people generally expected from him. Jackie cooed appreciatively, her hand reaching out to stroke the bare skin. She had taken the shaved body hair as a cosmetic choice, which was fine. The actual purpose was to keep the view of his skin unobstructed for inevitable impromptu surgeries, which would have been harder to explain and probably wouldn’t have gone over as well.
The Bruce in the rafters crept forward, looking for an access point to Riddler’s computers that was out of the man’s line of sight. He glanced back at Nygma once he’d passed his chair, trying to get a gauge of where Riddler was—
Oh.
Bruce stared, eyes widening behind his cowl as he realized what Edward was doing. His green pants were unbuckled, pulled down past his crotch for easier access. Purple gloves had been removed and draped delicately over the arm of his chair. One hand was pressed inside his obnoxious question mark boxers, its slow movements visible through the fabric. The other was pressed to his chin, considering; a perverse parody of Rodin’s Thinker.
His first instinct was LEAVE, which he fought back immediately. It was stupid. He was here to do a job, which would not be accomplished by giving Nygma a moment of privacy. His second instinct was to punch Riddler in the face, which was less stupid, but he fought that one back too. It was a time honored classic, but it seemed inappropriate for the situation. Edward certainly wasn’t in the position to fight back, though Bruce was self-aware enough to admit that hadn’t stopped him before. Generally his brutality in subduing Nygma was justified by the man being in the process of taking lives, which he hadn’t had an opportunity to do yet. Assaulting Edward now would imply he was angry at him for... this, which was both impractical and unobjective.
His third instinct was that Nygma’s current activity was probably very distracting, and that one he kept. Bruce doubted he’d ever get a better chance to gain entry to Riddler’s servers, and he wasn’t going to waste it over anything as petty as discomfort.
“Not that I’m not enjoying myself,” the recording of Bruce said, “but don’t you think this would be more fun with both hands free?”
“Ooh, good point,” Jackie said. The camera whirled around, then came to rest at a fixed point facing the bed. Jackie stood in front of it, leaning forward to adjust the camera’s position on the tripod. A strand of her short red hair fell in front of her eyes as she worked. She pushed it back behind her ear; her gaze flickered ever so slightly to the lens, as if checking that it had captured the motion.
In the present, Bruce dropped down to the left of Nygma’s computer mainframe. He stayed as perfectly silent as possible, though his stealth was definitely assisted by the loud volume of the video playing on the monitors.
Jackie squealed as Bruce picked her up from behind, lifting her in the air before letting them both fall backwards onto the bed. He pulled her onto his lap, kissing Jackie’s neck as he reached for the zipper of her dress.
There was a physical access port not far from where Bruce had landed. He pulled out his cryptographic sequencer, hoping the recent enhancements Barbara had been generous enough to provide would be enough to get the job done.
He plugged it in, glancing back at Nygma. He’d found a position where his view of the man was unobstructed, to make sure he didn’t make any sudden movements. Edward was currently unbuttoning his shirt with his free hand, fingers purposefully brushing his uncovered nipples as Jackie moaned in surround sound.
Bruce rolled his eyes behind the cowl, turning back to the sequencer. He’d never considered the topic of Riddler’s sexuality before — he tended to avoid thinking about his quarry that way, unless it was unavoidably relevant to a case — but it made complete sense that what the man found attractive would revolve around himself. Bruce should have guessed from the file name. He wondered if it would affect Edward’s interest in Jackie if he knew she was a natural brunette.
“So gorgeous,” Bruce told Jackie, pulling her hair away from her neck for better access. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting for this.”
Not very long. They’d done a practice run the day before, checking camera angles and running back footage to see what had come out best on screen. It wasn’t Bruce’s natural tendency to talk during sex, but Jackie had been clear about what she thought made good television. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that most of her line suggestions had been compliments. If Edward ever met her, he’d probably find that they had more in common than their hair.
Except there was really no reason for Bruce to be devoting any portion of his mind to the idea of Jackie and Edward meeting, so he cleared the thought out of his head. He focused on the decryption, keeping a cautious eye trained on Nygma. He had his fingers entangled in the hair at the back of his scalp, tugging at the red strands as his hips bucked against the hand in his pants.
“Aw,” Jackie purred, leaning backwards into Bruce’s touch. “You’ve been thinking about me?”
Bruce pulled the unzipped dress away from her body; she helped, shimmying the fabric down her legs and kicking it away. He pushed a hand down into her own underwear and she shuddered, hips rising to meet his fingers.
“All the time,” Bruce said, going in for a kiss. She moaned into his mouth. Beneath the screens, Nygma made a low, swallowed sound in the back of his throat.
Bruce turned his full attention to the sequencer. Riddler’s encryption was proving as difficult as its designer. Normally he would call Barbara for assistance when faced with something like this, but he couldn’t speak without alerting Nygma to his presence. Not that he’d want to have his microphone on right now, given the background noise in the room.
Jackie let her own hand ghost over Bruce’s in her lingerie, directing his fingers where she wanted them to go. Bruce laughed into her shoulder, but the sound was good natured. He followed it with a kiss to her collarbone, which turned into more as he sucked hard against the skin. The mark had still been there when they’d edited the video the next morning.
Her hiss broke into a whimper as he pulled away. The sound was echoed by Edward below her. “On my neck,” she ordered, and Bruce chuckled again.
“You know exactly what you like, don’t you?” Bruce said softly, then lowered his head to oblige her.
She twitched, eyes fluttering shut at the dual sensations. “I know what I- ah! I know what I want you to do next.”
Nygma made a keening noise that drew Bruce’s eyes back to his chair. He’d moved his free hand from his hair to his mouth, pressing his fingers between flushed lips. Bruce tore his gaze away again, focusing on the tech in his hands.
The couple on the screens broke apart, reaching for a pack of condoms that had been conveniently placed at the side of the bed. It was a break in the mood, but they’d both agreed ahead of time it was better to be safe than sorry. Bruce didn’t trust the 99% success rate of IUDs to prevent pregnancy, and Jackie didn’t trust the philandering playboy not to be carrying venereal disease. Bruce could hardly take offense, given that he had made an appointment to get checked the following weekend.
Bruce pulled Jackie’s underwear down to her knees as she pulled herself back over Bruce’s lap, kissing him with a playful force that almost left bruises on his lips. She tilted her head back as she carefully lowered herself onto his length, hissing a little at the stretch.
There was a stifled whimper from Edward’s direction. Bruce spared him a cursory glance; the man was biting down on the palm of his hand, muting himself as his eyes remained fixed on the screen directly in front of him. The hand down the front of his boxers was moving quickly now, much faster than the slow circling strokes Bruce had witnessed at the video’s start.
“Gorgeous,” Bruce repeated, panting in earnest now. He picked Jackie up and flipped her over, her back hitting the soft surface of the bed. She gasped at the sudden change in positions, legs kicking behind Bruce’s head. The sound of creaking metal indicated that Nygma had jolted in his chair, though Bruce resisted the urge to look back again.
He was making progress on the encryption; in a few more moments he’d be finished, and then he could... do something. Make Nygma pull himself together, for one thing. The idea of cuffing Edward in his current state was almost more distracting than the muffled noises the man was making, which was saying something.
“Bruce,” Jackie moaned, her nails digging into the skin of his arms as he pounded into her.
“Yes?” he asked, and Jackie rolled her eyes, though the gesture had been safely out of view of the camera. He slowed down, adopting a more regular pace as he leaned forward to press his lips against her breasts.
Her breath caught audibly as he sucked against the sensitive skin. “Fuck.”
“So responsive,” Bruce said, a half smile crossing his features. The curiosity in his tone was the first genuine emotion that had crept into his voice all night. “Let’s test that, shall we?”
Jackie shuddered beneath him, strong arms pinning her to the bedsheets.
“Bruce—”
His hands slipped at the sequencer’s controls. A flash of red light glared at him from the server box, and he would have flinched had he not already been staring wide-eyed in Nygma’s direction. A high-pitched alarm replaced the audio from the tape, and Edward’s green eyes broke away from the screen to glance frantically around the room. Eventually they fell on Bruce.
He moved like lightning, jumping to his feet and lunging for the question mark cane that leaned against the console. Bruce moved slower than he should have, jumping forward only to be met by a bolt of electricity to the chest.
Bruce growled as he was pushed backwards by the blast. He regained his footing and returned the favor, winding back to land a kick directly into Edward’s stomach. The blow sent Nygma off-balance, the pants around his knees causing him to stumble. Bruce lept to slam him into the ground; there was a painful sounding thud as Riddler’s back hit the cement flooring. Though the man struggled against him, he couldn’t find the purchase to pull himself back up.
Riddler’s face was furious, a twisted mask of anger that was almost intimidating, despite the situation. It dissipated, just a little, as Nygma visually came to the realization that he wasn’t going to be able to pull himself up for another attack.
The expression that replaced it was something similar to what Bruce was feeling; a silent mortification, underlined by an anxiety for what was going to happen next. He looked up at Bruce like he expected him to say something. Bruce wasn’t sure he had ever been less interested in saying something in his life.
Edward swallowed, staring up at the man hovering menacingly above him. His voice was dry when he spoke, though a harshness in his tone implied it was meant to be a threat.
“Don’t tell him,” he croaked.
Bruce punched him in the face.