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“Do we really have to do this?”
Sean winced as D’Angelo’s fist whipped out, making contact with the uncovered gap between his kevlar vest and arm. It fucking hurt, and for some reason it was 50% of the man’s total attempts at communication on a good day.
“Chief said everyone,” D’Angelo said, eyes still on the door in front of them. He was holding a paper cup of coffee that had been cold for going on four hours now.
“Right,” Sean said, resisting the urge to reach up and rub at his arm. It would just encourage him. “But Bruce Wayne isn’t everyone -- and. I mean, we already arrested three possible suspects. There’s no way it’s not one of them.”
D’Angelo, as always, remained silent. It really fucking pissed Sean off, even more than the random punitive punching. The man was stone on a good day. Their partnership was built entirely on long, awkward silences that were slowly, surely, driving Sean insane.
More insane than normal, Gotham levels at least. Sean didn’t think there was a single patrol officer in Gotham who wasn’t at least a little bit cracked. Even the higher ups had their moments of madness, when big shit went down. The Chief sure did.
“C’mon, man,” Sean protested. “I’m not arresting Bruce Wayne for being Batman. That’s fucking nuts.”
“He was there. He’s tall enough to fit the description,” D’Angelo said, shrugging. “Makes sense to me.”
Sean tried not to visibly deflate. He curled his hands into the straps of his vest, holding on for dear life.
“So you’re going to cuff him, then. Right?”
D’Angelo gave him a look over the rim of his paper coffee cup. He took a stone-faced sip, never once betraying the fact that he was drinking cold, toxic sludge that had emerged, miraculously, from the bottom of the precinct’s carafe sometime in the last three days.
Fuck me, Sean thought, shaking his head. We’re really fucking doing this, aren’t we?
He glanced at D’Angelo out of the side of his eye. “You’re sure?”
D’Angelo grunted once. Sean took that as permission, reaching out to knock at the center of the huge, wooden door before them.
The excitement of seeing Wayne Manor in person had quickly worn off on the drive up. A part of Sean -- a childish, nostalgic part -- protested against the idea of arresting Bruce Wayne.
It was like arresting Gotham’s weird, drunk uncle -- sure, he was an airhead. Sure, Wayne got into more bar fights and drunken squabbles at fundraisers than the average Gothamite, but that didn’t mean he was Batman.
The man was, by all accounts, a charming, if distractible, trust fund baby. Gotham’s one and only surviving prince. The guy who threw out the first pitch at the occasional Gotham Knights game. Brucie.
After a minute had passed in silence, Sean reached up to knock again. Before his fist could connect, the door swung inwards.
“Oh,” Sean fumbled backward, pasting on a smile as an unfamiliar face appeared at the doorway. “Hello. I’m Officer Leighty with GCPD. This is my colleague, Officer D’Angelo. We’re here to speak with Bruce Wayne.”
The man -- clearly dressed as a servant of some sort -- stepped out into the daylight. He gave them a shrewd once-over, hands folded behind his back.
“May I inquire as to the reason for your visit?” the man asked, crisp vowels curling in on themselves. British. What a trip.
Sean tried to smile even wider. “We just have a few questions for him. Is he home right now? Or is there somewhere else we can speak with him?”
The servant’s eyebrows arched upward. “Is he under arrest?”
“Alfred. What’s going on?”
The servant took a step back as soon as Wayne’s voice echoed in the front hall, deferring to his employer. He shot Sean a sharp look as he did so, lips pressed into a thin line.
“Hi, Mr. Wayne,” Sean said, loosening one hand from his vest to wave at Wayne. “My name is Officer Leighty with GCPD. This is my colleague, Officer D’Angelo.”
Wayne stepped out onto the front step, squinting at the tepid daylight. He was taller than Sean would’ve guessed -- probably sitting at a comfortable 6’4 in socks. Or, in Sean’s mother’s words, too damn tall.
“Nice to meet you,” Wayne said, holding out his hand to Sean, and then D’Angelo when Sean remembered what a handshake was. “How can I help you officers?”
D’Angelo glanced at Sean, a silent your turn passing between them. Sean dropped his other hand from his vest, reaching for the cuffs on the back of his duty belt.
“I’m really sorry to do this, Mr. Wayne,” Sean started, holding out the cuffs. “You’re currently under arrest on suspicion of being the -- the, uh Batman, sir.”
There was a beat of silence, and then another. One suspect had laughed, that morning when they’d announced the arrest. Laughed until he was crying, bent over with his wrists held out to Sean. The others had been, for the most part, righteously indignant.
“Do I look like the fucking Batman to you?” one had said, scowling fiercely. “You think I’d still be living on 34th in some shithole apartment if I could just beat someone up and get a new one? What the FUCK, man?”
“I couldn’t even pass the first level of Taekwondo. How the hell am I supposed to be leaping around Gotham doing flips?”
Sean waited Wayne out, bracing for the indignation -- the laughter, the confusion. The inevitable flurry of questions. Do I need a lawyer? Why am I being detained? This is ridiculous. I wasn’t even at that party. You’ve got the wrong guy.
But Wayne didn’t move. His expression was calm and even, like he’d just heard a vaguely interesting piece of gossip. His hands were loose at his sides, no hint of anger or distress in his posture.
“So, I,” Sean took a breath, feeling the servant’s eyes burning into his vest from under Wayne’s shoulder. “So, I regret to, uh, inform you that we need to -- to detain you. As a precaution, while we try to identify the actual suspect.”
That seemed to pique Wayne’s curiosity. “The actual suspect?”
“You fit the description,” Sean said, shrugging apologetically. “You were at the Lavann party on June 20th, as confirmed by surveillance footage from inside the venue. We’re looking at all attendees with a certain build or height, just as a precaution, like I said.”
Sean swore he saw the corner of Wayne’s mouth twitch. “So you don’t think I’m the Batman?”
It seemed to be an oddly loaded question. Sean glanced at D’Angelo, but his partner’s eyes were glued to Wayne. And suddenly narrowed.
“We have several potential suspects,” Sean said, wiggling the cuffs awkwardly in the air. “I’m sorry, but I really do have to put these on. We’ll take you down to the station and hopefully get this all cleared up soon.”
Wayne held out his arms obligingly, not putting up a fight. His face was blank, eyes briefly flicking up to the servant still standing in the doorway. The servant nodded, disappearing into the house without a single word spoken between them.
Sean unclicked the cuffs, reaching for Wayne’s wrists. Luckily, Wayne was already fully dressed -- slacks, a collared shirt, and shoes -- so they didn’t need to go back and get anything. “If you could just hold your arms out a little, that would be -- yeah, just like that is great.”
He slipped the cuff around Wayne’s left wrist, pushing down on the strand to slide the teeth into the locked position.
The cuff barely reached halfway around Wayne’s bare wrist. Sean pressed down on the strand again, feeling the teeth bite into skin. He wrapped his other hand around Wayne’s arm, feeling thick, corded muscle under his fingers.
A chill went down his spine, leaving him hot and flushed in its wake. Adrenaline surged through his chest, prickling down to his hands.
“I. Ah.” Sean glanced up at D’Angelo. “Do we have those XL cuffs in the back still?”
D’Angelo’s eyes were locked onto the unclosed cuff around Wayne’s wrist. For the first time since Sean had known him, the other man seemed to be at a genuine loss for words.
The cuffs didn’t fit. They didn’t even come close to locking. And for a man’s wrists to be that muscular…to be flecked with tiny, white scars now that Sean was actually looking…
“Those,” D’Angelo cleared his throat, slowly setting his coffee cup down on the planter next to him. “Those are the XL cuffs. I only have standard in my trunk.”
Sean nodded, slowly putting that together. They could use zip ties. Zip ties locked together, and then locked to the other arm. A dozen zip ties, maybe. And the ankle chains from the trunk. And --
Despite his best efforts, Sean found his eyes wandering up from Wayne’s wrists. His patrol brain noted the thick, expensive dress shirt -- to hide scars, and perhaps a more muscular build. The beat of Wayne’s pulse in his wrist, slow and even against Sean’s thumb.
The masculine jaw, the defined lips and a nose that had clearly been broken and righted more than once. Broad shoulders, thick, muscular hands, and the quiet assuredness of a man sizing up opponents far weaker than himself.
“You, uh,” Sean tried to laugh, but it came out more like a ragged breath. “You work out a lot or something, Mr. Wayne?”
Sharp blue eyes met Sean’s. Wayne’s expression was still unnervingly blank, but Sean got the impression that he was amused. “Something like that.”
“Cool. Yeah, me too.” Sean fumbled for something to say, instead of what the fuck, what the fuck do I do, what the fucking FUCK. “I’ve been trying to do more of a weightlifting split, but it’s hard with the -- the patrol hours, you know?”
“I do,” Wayne said. Sean’s stomach plummeted as he put that together, turning to D’Angelo with fear burning like acid in his stomach.
Holy fuck. Holy FUCK.
D’Angelo actually took a step back from Wayne, hands held out by his waist so they were visible. “Leighty, 86 that 10-48. Let’s head back to the precinct.”
The instructions seemed to be more for Wayne’s benefit than theirs, telegraphing their actions like Wayne was a spooked animal and not a reasonable, fully human man. Sean slid the cuff off of Wayne’s wrist, making an apologetic noise as the teeth caught on his shirt sleeve.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sean could see D’Angelo subtly making the old army sign for retreat behind his back. He swallowed, sliding the cuffs back onto his belt.
“Really sorry about that,” Sean said to Wayne, not making direct eye contact. “We’re just going to -- go now. Sorry to bother you. I’m sure this was all some sort of misunderstanding. I’m not -- okay, yeah. Cool.”
Wayne said nothing as they retreated down the steps toward the patrol car. He rubbed at his previously-cuffed wrist idly, examining the marks Sean had inadvertently left there.
They piled into the car faster than any drill. D’Angelo turned over the engine, yanking them into gear just slow enough to avoid stalling the car outright.
Sean didn’t breathe again until they were off Wayne Manor’s private drive and back on the highway. He didn’t think D’Angelo had taken a breath at all.
“Oh my god.”
“Put your head between your knees,” D’Angelo growled. Oddly helpful. He was gritting his teeth, hands clenched around the steering wheel so tightly Sean could see every bone in his fingers. “Get it together before you puke, rookie.”
Sean tried very, very hard not to puke. He slid his head down between his knees, breathing in the rotting smell of a GCPD patrol car several decades past its prime.
After about five minutes, he finally braved being upright again. Before he could even open his mouth, D’Angelo shook his head.
“No.”
“You didn’t even hear what I was going to say.”
“That’s because it doesn’t fucking matter,” D’Angelo said. “We didn’t go on that call, okay? And if someone says you did, you tell them Wayne wasn’t home. You tell them, on second thought, he really didn’t fit the description. Understood?”
Sean stared at him, speechless. He knew that things got buried a lot -- it was Gotham, of course things got bought off and quashed and disappeared -- but this was. This was so much more than a simple drug dealer buying off a beat cop for a trafficking charge.
Bruce Wayne was --
“Don’t,” D’Angelo said, risking a look away from the road. His eyes were still wide. The speedometer maxed out as they revved into the left lane, speeding past traffic. “Don’t fucking argue with me about this. You understand what I’m saying to you right now?”
Sean let out a bizarre, choked laugh. He sat back against the seat, staring at the skyline of Gotham in the distance. It all seemed to blur together, distinctly indistinct.
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. His hands were still trembling with unspent adrenaline. “I understand.”