Chapter Text
No way.
There is no way.
Jim doesn’t have much brain power to dedicate but he is so certain there’s no way he saw that right.
An impromptu interrogation in a rundown factory went south. Jim got a bullet graze on the shoulder and a nice shard of glass to his thigh after being thrown through a window. Luckily they were only on the first floor, unluckily the glass didn’t stay in. It just left a nasty gouge that will not stop bleeding.
Batman found him in a few minutes and immediately took note of the likely life-threatening wound. The vigilante quickly grabs for a set of medical gloves from his belt along with a small suture kit.
This is the part Jim can’t wrap his head around.
When Batman tugs his armored gauntlets off to tug on the clean gloves his bare hands are momentarily visible. They’re much slimmer than Jim would have assumed, they’re more reminiscent of a doctor or a musician, but just as calloused as one might expect. What he didn’t expect is chipped black nail polish.
It looks to be a few days old, a week at most. He only has a few seconds to observe before they’re covered up again.
Batman is asking him questions, and Jim isn’t paying attention. Sue him, he’s woozy from the blood loss and spinning the new piece of the bat-shaped puzzle in his mind. The sting of a sterilized needle and threat pushing through his thigh finally yanks him out of it.
“Ow! Warn a guy!” He snaps.
“I did try.” The Bat counters.
“Then try harder.”
“Hn.”
The pair sit in relative silence with Jim’s occasional grunt of discomfort and the vigilante’s muttered apologies.
“Would talking help distract you?” Batman asks.
Jim ponders it for a moment before nodding. When Batman doesn’t continue Jim realizes he meant for the commissioner to put in all the work.
“Are you, like, goth or something?” Why was that the first thing that came out of this mouth? “First the music, then the makeup, now the black nails.” Oh, he isn’t stopping. “Not that it’s a bad thing, just an observation. I think that stuff is cool; the goth and the emo and the— the scene stuff. My daughter was really into the whole emo thing for a while and I learned a lot from her. I could never, though. The clothes, the hair, the piercings and the tattoos are cool on other people but I would feel so strange. What’s the point of wearing three belts and not putting any of them in the loops?”
Batman is pointedly not reacting to his rambling, focusing entirely on creating the textbook-perfect sutures holding Jim’s leg closed.
“Do you have any of that? What else are you hiding under all the kevlar and plating?” Jim is going to lay awake at night for weeks thinking back on how embarrassing this is. “Sorry, this is so rude. I don’t know why I can’t stop talking.”
Jim lets the pause linger, entirely willing to go back to sitting in silence if it saves him any remaining scraps of dignity.
“I have a few piercings, mostly in my ears.” Batman starts slowly. “I had more when I was a teenager, but I took most of them out when I started… this.” ‘This’ evidently being vigilantism. “I do have a couple tattoos. Nothing big or intricate, just stick-n-pokes from anyone that would offer. I tried the bright hair once in high school, but I hated it. I was more into jewelry.”
For one insane moment, Jim imagines a tiny Batman with neon purple hair and gaudy silver jewelry.
“I was also in a band for a while.” He adds, almost as an afterthought.
“A band?”
“It was all covers and we never played outside of a garage, but it lasted almost two years. For a group of teenagers that’s an impressive streak.”
“What did you play?” Please say drums.
“I was the singer, and back-up bass sometimes.” Jim actually wheezes. A painful, lung-emptying wheeze. Considering the growl and impressive range Jim has heard over the years, the commissioner can only imagine what that might have sounded like.
“Can you do the scream thing?” He is so blaming this on the blood loss.
“Used to, haven’t tried in years.” Oh what he wouldn’t give to hear that. “I might still have tapes somewhere.”
“I will remember you said that.”
“You have to survive this first.” The Bat says as he pulls the last suture closed.
—
Four days later, when Jim gets out of the hospital and is cleared to rest at home, he enters his kitchen to find a little box on the counter. Inside are three cassettes marked with dates and titles he doesn’t recognize, the labels have seen better days.
Well now he has to go buy a player.