18232/So... you brought a boy home, huh

So... you brought a boy home, huh
Date of Scene:	08 June 2024
Location:	Family Room - Wayne Manor
Synopsis:	Sometimes an expensive lamp is made in Taiwon. Sometimes a father is intimidating for more reasons than being a father. Sometimes training comes in more forms than anyone can imagine. Sometimes mistakes are the catalyst for a lesson. Sometimes Bruce gives spoilers.
Cast of Characters:	Damian Wayne, Allen-James, Bruce Wayne

---

Damian Wayne has posed:
Damian is sitting in the family room, talking to AJ. He looks pretty damned beat up from last night's activities but his eyes are glittering energetically. He practically lives for battle! He is wearing gray Nike sweatpants and no shirt. Instead, his entire midsection is wrapped in tape by Alfred's expert hands. The ribs that were previously broken and still in the process of healing got rebroken as fuck by a certain vampire lord punching him in the gut multiple times and throwing him across the room.

Sitting on Damian's lap is a black cat -- Shadow -- curled up and napping. Ace is here too. He is sitting near wherever AJ is sitting with his head on AJ's leg begging for pets. And near the doors leading outside, lying on his back and snoring lightly, is Goliath. Alfred does NOT like it when Goliath is in the house but the gang had a rough night so he's going to let it slide this time. Something in Goliath's current dream triggers him to twitch his leg, which hits an end table, which causes a lamp to fall off and shatter on the ground.

Blinking a few times, Damian says, "Shit. Alfred is going to be pissed."

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ has come back to the mansion after a day spent at a different mansion. He's got a shiner from last night, his left eye black and bruised, puffy but not swollen shut, clearly having been treated for it after getting punched in the face by a vampire in that melee.

    Unrelated, his right hand is also all bandaged up, with an ice pack on it, and AJ is petting Ace with his left. "So I was trying to reabsorb one of my shields, and it felt like it exploded inside my hand when I got half way through." AJ is explaining his right hand, as he leans back in his seat.

    The crash interrupts him, and his eyes glow orange for a moment, tendrils of energy raising from them like smoke as he whips his head around, a bit jumpy, as if he's been seeing Vampire Queens showing up to slaughter them all in his sleep lately. Which is ridiculous, right? Right? No one knows who he is, or where he sleeps... Right?

    He sighs, seeing the broken lamp, and the glow fades out of his eyes, and he lets out a hollow laugh, a little forced. He sighs. "Are you... Are you ok?" His voice hangs in the air, soft and almost shy as he asks it. "I mean, obviously you're all beat up and all, but.."

Bruce Wayne has posed:
Alfred almost certainly would be pissed if one of the antique lamps were to be shattered. It falls from the table when Goliath kicks it in his dream state, wobbling for a second, and then toppling towards the floor, and crashes near bare feet. Bare feet that belong to Bruce Wayne.

Was he there the whole time?

There's absolutely no way he could have stood that close to them for that long without either of them noticing, but the reality is he is here now and... he definitely wasn't a couple moments before. Like someone turned on the lights and a coat rack you hadn't seen is sitting in the corner.

It's Bruce.

Admittedly the same Bruce Wayne that's been seen on television smiling for cameras or on the arm of a number of very beautiful women over the years. Except it is definitely not that man. The difference between who's standing there now and the image most people have in mind of Bruce are literally night and day. Something in the posture? Something in the expression.

Blue eyes peer from where Damian is sitting, wrapped in medical tape, and AJ is sitting with Ace's head on his leg. The Lord of the Manor is dressed casually. A dark tanktop and sweat pants. His hair, jet black, is slicked back and there's a towel draped around his neck.

With tape around his knuckles, up to his wrist.

"That lamp was my grandmothers." He doesn't sound as cold as Batman, but it's not far off. And his blue eyes aren't looking at Damian, but at AJ. It's not withering, but it is unflinching. The muscles in his jaw tighten, then relax and turn up into a shadow of a grin. "Allen-James." He steps over the shattered remains of his grandmothers lamp and extends his sizable hand out to the young man, "I'm Bruce Wayne." He doesn't say, and that's absolutely the only thing you'll ever call me outside of the batsuit, but if three simple words could convey a whole sentence worth of information?

It's probably in the way he's staring.

Damian Wayne has posed:
"I mean, physically I'm pretty beat up. And Talia..." He doesn't say 'mother', he says 'Talia'. "...is in really critical condition. But we're all alive and we saved a lot of lives last night. We saved a lot of people who would have been killed or turned by those vampires." The young man nods in AJ's direction. "/You/ saved a lot of lives, AJ."

Damian Wayne was grown in a vat and raised by murderous psychopaths. He doesn't /do/ scared. But when Bruce suddenly appears and mentions the lamp being his grandmother's he gulps and his eyes widen. If Superman himself were standing there and it was /his/ grandmother's lamp Damian wouldn't be more nervous than he is now.

"I'm sorry, father," he says in a way that one of the most prolific murderers of the modern era speaks to nobody else on this Earth.

Allen-James has posed:
    Allen-James looks up from the lamp. And up. And up. He is tense under those eyes, just for a second, and he sweeps to his feet as the man approaches him. Not that it makes much difference in how far he has to look up. The power armor disguised it a little, but AJ is short. A petite, waiflike young man, he looks younger than he is, though he takes Bruce's hand with his bruised, bandaged right hand, ignoring the twinge of pain as he shakes it. "A pleasure to meet you for the very first time, Mister Wayne. I'm Allen-James. Vincent. Ramses-Denholme. The fourth. But please. Call me AJ." He does his ice breaker shtick with his name, to see if Bruce has a sense of humor about him, and waits to be dismissed so that he can sit again.

    After all, growing up AJVRD IV did come with more than a few lessons on etiquette. Of course, they don't tell you how to greet Batman when meeting him in his civilian guise for the first time, after you went on a vampire slaying outing with him and his extended family. There are, after all, limits to even the wildest imaginations of those that set the Rules of Polite Behavior, but he's erring towards formality, until given leave to relax a little.

Bruce Wayne has posed:
In circumstances like this, Bruce would test the mettle of a man by the quality of his handshake, but he'd seen the injuries present on AJ's knuckles and opted for something less vicelike. Only by a small margin. That is a strong grip. Not enough to make injuries worse, but firm. Almost respectful. In the way people of Bruce's age view a handshake, anyways. Not that he's old, just... well.. He's Bruce Wayne.

In a manner of speaking.

The joke falls upon him, not unlike the way Damian speaks his apology about the lamp. With his grip held for, perhaps, a few seconds longer than is specifically polite. At least for a board meeting, certainly not in the mansion of a billionaire. Where he's meeting his sons boyfriend for the first time... at least outside of his loaned bat armor.

He releases AJ's hand nods, reaching up to instead grip both ends of the towel draped around his neck. Smirking, at first, at the joke. With a nod. Then a glance between them. "That lamp is older than all three of us combined." He comments off handedly, glancing over his shoulder at the broken pieces laid on the hard wood floor with a twitch to the corner of his mouth. "It was, anyways."

Apparently he does have a sense of humor.

Dry, perhaps. Desert dry.

When he looks back, his brow is furrowed. Thoughtfully glancing between them, "You need training." To AJ. "If you're going to be out with my son. If you're ever going to join us again." he nods slowly to that. And as if this isn't awkward enough for everyone, "Have you both eaten?"

Damian Wayne has posed:
Every ounce of Damian's attention is locked on the interchange between his father and AJ. His keen eyes miss no nuance, no subtlety. This is a critical moment because if Bruce doesn't approve of AJ and AJ has already been brought 'inside' then things will get a WHOLE lot more complicated quite quickly. But, you know, for a Bruce Wayne meet-and-greet, things went remarkably well. No doubt AJ is feeling vulnerable and self-conscious right about now, but that was never not going to happen. All things considered Damian breathes a small sigh of relief.

"Yeah he does," Damian agrees with a sly tone of voice and a glitter in his eyes. Maybe there is double entendre there?

Then Damian furrows his eyebrows as realization dawns on his face. "Wait a minute," he says. "That lamp..." He grunts in a little pain as he gets up and sets Shadow on the seat upon which he was sitting. "You hired an interior decorator to set up this room a couple years ago." He limps over to the lamp shards and picks up the base and looks at it, frowning. He turns the base toward Bruce. "Made in Taiwan? Your grandmother bought lamps with made in Taiwan stickers on them?"

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ's hand is more all one big bruise, than damage to the knuckles. Not something he got last night. Something he did today. While training? Or, no, really while just dicking around and trying something new. Training was not, particularly, worse than usual, in spite of the full body ache of the day after vampire hunting.


AJ's face grows not quite sullen, distant as he thinks back over the previous nights. There's plenty to beat himself up over, but the statement about training certainly isn't untrue. He was the least skilled of them, and made up for it with the armor and his powers. Barely made up for it, in his mind.

    "I'm on a six meal a day, never refuse food diet. To get my muscle mass back up. The dietician told me that there's no such thing as 'enough protein' in my life right now." he says softly, giving Bruce a forced little smile. "I've been trying to recover from being malnourished, so that training like I used to won't kill me." he counters the snark about training with the 'I was homeless three months ago' card. "For right now, they're limiting me to two hours a day of weights. I hope to be back to four soon though. I think I'm restarting sword practice next week."

    He seems to be taking that criticism very seriously, because he has it of himself.

    He glances over at Damian at the agreement, looking a little hurt. It's as much an admission that he shouldn't have gone out with them, at least in his mind, and his face falls a little more stiff.

    And then the lamp thing. AJ doesn't even know how to take this. He's off balance, and out of sorts, and doesn't know what to say.

Bruce Wayne has posed:
Bruce listens to what AJ says of his training regimen and hears the nuanced implications when malnurishment is brought up. This is not one of his protiges. He reminds himself of that and, instead of shutting down the admission as an excuse, simply nods. He doesn't have to push the mutant to do more than he thinks he's capable of.. Since it appears Damian is going to do so himself.

Bruce glances to his son he does, then fully around with a raised brow when the detail of the lamp is brought to light. That brow hangs upwards in a curve. Was it a test? See if either of them would pick out the small details of a crime scene under the scrutiny of meeting your boyfriends father? Who is also Batman?

He nods between them.

Then laughs. Not out loud, perhaps, but certainly louder than anyone would expect from him. Once it dies down, he rolls his shoulders, still gripping the tail ends of the towel across the back of his neck. "Shortly after my 18th birthday, I went to South East Asia. Lived for four years in Bangkok, Hanoi, Phnom Penh. Mostly on the streets. Every meal was five fingers away." He stole for them. "Anyways, once I returned to the states, Alfred started me on a regimented diet. I believe I was down to a hundred and thirty pounds. Give or take."

Alfred isn't nearly as stealthy as Bruce, "One hundred and fifty Seven, sir." He sets down a tray as he speaks. Sandwiches, drinks. Bruce points to him, lifting his hands, elbow extended out where it still holds his towel. "I bulked on sixty pounds in three months. It wasn't healthy, it was necessary." Alfred peers at Bruce over his glasses, then moves to collect the broken pieces of the lamp. Even taking the piece in Damian's hand to drop in a trash bag.

He nods then and rubs both sides of the towel on his face, finding a place to sit. "Do right by your body, AJ. You only get one." It might be a compliment. Maybe? He's certainly not boring a hole through the young man anymore. "And don't listen to Damian. Made in Taiwon can mean a lot of things."

"Cheap." Alfred says, dropping another piece into the bag with a clatter.

"Usually cheap, yes."

Damian Wayne has posed:
Ever since he died, Damian has stopped referring to Alfred as Pennyworth. Mostly Damian has returned to his old, salty self. Mostly. But for some reason he has a new regard for the man who quite literally keeps the Bat Family alive in so many ways. "Hey, Alfred," Damian says with uncharacteristic warmth as he limps back to sit, readjusting Shadow to his lap. He encouragingly pushes the tray a little closer to AJ but not before he grabs one of Alfred's famous (let's be real, all his shit is famous) deli-style shrimp salad sandwiches for himself.

"Look, I have never had powers so I don't know the first thing about training with them," Damian says around hearty bites of the sandwich. "But if I had to take a shot in the dark, I would say master combat without your powers, then become even better by adding them in. You never know when you might be in a situation where you can't use them. Or they are somehow neutralized." He shrugs once. "Just my unsolicited two cents. But for real, you handled yourself well. You have a lot of training you need to do. But hell, so do I. But you kept your head and your focus. That sort of thing can almost never be learned. You have it or you don't."

He peers toward his father as if to see if the man agrees with Damian's assessment. In that moment it is, perhaps, easy to see the hero worship in Damian's expression. Like a shadow that simply cannot be described absent the light source that makes it possible, Damian cannot be described absent the Batman...his father.

Allen-James has posed:
    AJ is surprised to hear that Bruce did the street for four years. He eyes the man, a little more respect in his eyes. For someone who spent the last five years on the streets of New York, he's pretty impressed that Bruce did it with a language barrier too.

    He moves to take a sandwich, and some water, and moves to take his seat again. already starting in on the sandwich like a starving man. If he weighs 130, it's cause he's got on five pounds of weights. His first bites get a groan, and he nods.

    "I have been mostly training my air running trick. Everything else is just.. improvisation and bad ideas." he says, looking down at his right hand.

    "I didn't, though. Keep my focus. I got out of position. I shouldn't have gone to catch the girl." he says softly, self recrimination heavy in his voice. "I should have stayed, protected you. Protected..." Not that it would have made a difference. That vampire queen would have gone through him like a hot knife through butter. But then he'd be the one hurt, not Damian and Talia. "I got out of position."

    He shakes his head again, "I need more training, at everything. I'll see if..." He pauses, trying to remember if he should keep Bishop's name to himself. Deciding discretion is the better part of valor, he continues on. "My mentor can drill me more on situational awareness, and.. I don't even know. Everything else. I just.." he sighs, looking lost, anxious, angry, mostly at himself.

Bruce Wayne has posed:
The pause is enough to hint a lot of things to Bruce. He knows AJ is a mutant, that much was easily put together. He knew he grew up in New York as well. While he wasn't, specifically, aware of the Xavier's school? He'd fought with the X-Men during the invasion a decade ago. That they hadn't really been seen since was an anomoly, but there was no indication that they were all killed. So it was fairly easy to draw parallels to the paramilitary group of mutants that assisted them after Superman's death.

He doesn't pry.

He doesn't NEED to pry.

He just nods. Whether agreement or understanding... possibly respect for not outting his mentor. "For what it's worth, you followed your instincts. The presence of the master was an unfortunate necessity." Oh, Bruce knew she would come. He counted on it. Punching her in her undead face wasn't the only reason he needed her to show up, was it? No... oh no.

He needed to see her fight.

See her powers first hand. He should feel guilty, and at some level probably does. Damian was hurt, Talia was nearly killed. Julia.. Essix. So many injured. The intel acquired might be worth it to him, but the cost was heavy. And he can see that in AJs face. "You did well." He assures him with a nod, agreeing with Damian's assessment. "I've had twenty four years of training with some of the most powerful people on the planet, across countless planets, from places that don't even exist anymore."

"And all I did was piss her off."

He snorts, it was more than that of course.

"Next time you'll be better trained, we all will. We'll know what she can do. If she ever comes back to Gotham?" Again he wipes his face, pushing up from the chair with a grunt. "She will regret it. And that, boys, is not an opinion. It's a spoiler."

He winks at Damian and steps around the chair, reaching down to pet Shadow's head as he passes. "Enjoy the sandwiches. It was a pleasure meeting you, young man."

Damian Wayne has posed:
Shadow lifts her head and pushes it into Bruce's hand. Who knows, maybe she remembers a differently dressed Bruce scooping her terrified form up off the ground in the pouring rain weeks ago. Or maybe she's merely an instinctual pleasure seeker. Either way she's living her best life as one of Damian's animals.

"Father."

With obvious effort, Damian stands up. He watches Bruce begin his exit. Damian's eyes say that maybe he wants to say more but can't, or doesn't know how. When something stays locked away for want of the ability to express it, if not for want of an understanding ear.

"Goodnight."

Then Damian sits back down slowly. There are small grimaces but he doesn't like to show weakness in general, and certainly not in front of Bruce Wayne.

Allen-James has posed:
    It doesn't, exactly, make it better, knowing that Batman, of all people 'just pissed her off'. But he does believe the man when he says that she'd regret it when she came back. But, it is nice to know that the man doesn't think he made a complete ass of himself.

    AJ stands up as well, "The pleasure is mutual, Sir." he says respectfully, formally, and waits for the man to leave, before he flops back into his chair, and reaches for another sandwich.

    "Well, that just happened." he barks a little laugh, and sighs.

    "Your father is scary." he says with a snort.