There's a thin line between respectability and matronliness, and Jay counts herself lucky that Beatrice never comes close to crossing it. Respectability is nothing but a mask that's more convenient for Beatrice to slip on when Jay accompanies, anyway, as is the faint aura of scandal that clings to Beatrice's skin like heady perfume when she goes out without her adopted daughter.
But even when Jay is with her, there's always something - the flashes of paparazzi, perhaps - to remind that "the Wayne heiress" (that's so fucking ridiculous, a woman in her late thirties and they're calling heiress like it's not hers) has been rumoured to have liaisons with more men than is fashionable even in this day and age. Even in her best long classy black dress, Beatrice is more Hedy Lamarr that Loretta Young.
At fundraisers they mostly wear long dresses, and gloves. Mostly long opera gloves that go up their elbows, half for the bruises and half for the drama. Beatrice's always are black velvet, coiled snuggly around her arms. She clenches a heavy diamond bracelet around her wrist, and wraps a flimsy gauzy shawl around her shoulders like it's a tease or for modesty, when in fact it's to cover the web of scars on her skin.
"Y'know, you could probably get them to think they're a new kind of body art. Newest trend. All the rage in Japan," Jay told her once, as she regarded Beatrice getting prepared.
"I do have Japanese business partners who'll know there's not a word true," Beatrice replied dryly, not taking her eyes away from her reflection.
Jay made a deliberately rude gesture. In the mirror a girl in a pretty if modest frock was pulling an unladylike face. "Your guys don't know jack about that. I'm talking pretend it's from Harajuku, not straight-laced Tokyo."
"No," Beatrice had said, and that was the end of it.
Then there's the days where Beatrice goes to work. Her wardrobe is filled with an army of powersuits - often pants, sometimes skirts - in fabric that Jay loves to rub against her cheek. (She's sure about the army of suits. Beatrice's wardrobe is only slightly smaller than the apartment Jay and her mom inhabited for three years.)
When she can, Jay watches B prepare herself then, too, pretending not to out of the corner of her eye. She gets behind Beatrice, all casual-like, and as Beatrice gathers her hair or touches her make-up, tugs on locks of hair, until the classy bun Beatrice ties her hair into comes undone, and Beatrice's hair rests on her shoulders.
She smiles, satisfied with her handiwork, and ignores the way Beatrice's eyebrows arch in the mirror as Beatrice starts fixing her hair again. The second time she attempts to loosen the hairdo, Beatrice's hand closes around her wrist. Without turning, Beatrice meets her eyes. “Stop that.”
“It's criminal, what you're doing with your hair,” Jay informs, again. Sometimes she swears, which Beatrice takes much less lightly than Jay's ruining of her hair-brushing efforts.
“If I don't pull them up they'll get in the way,” Beatrice says, level. “And the people I work with won't take me seriously.”
“It won't get in the goddamn way,” Jay retorts. “It doesn't get in the way when we're out together, does it?” Together, out, on the town; it all means the same. The Bat and Robin. A much truer persona than the dull woman whose clothing Beatrice puts on for the office.
“Beatrice Wayne pulls her hair up for the office because it gets in the way if she doesn't. Or because she wants her hairstyle to always look perfect.” Beatrice's let go of Jay's wrist, by this point, and she's started again arranging her hair how she sees fit.
Jay lets her hand fall back down. “I like you better when you're just Beatrice.”
The trick is to time it so Beatrice isn't completely done a-fixing her daytime mask.
“I know, honey.” Her hair is still thick locks being smoothed under the palms of Beatrice's hands, and her voice is only half Beatrice Wayne's. Half something else. Something true.
Once, Beatrice Wayne is going on a date. With Vic Vale, of all people. Jay hates when Beatrice goes on dates.
Usually, it's not an issue. The main if not only interest Beatrice finds in the men she has been frequenting is the good – or bad – it does for her reputation, which is the lowest priority on the scale Jay had been able to work out. At the top of the priority scale, there's the Mission. When it comes to saving someone, everything takes a step back. Just beneath it, there's Jay.
All Jay needs do is voice disappointment for Beatrice to sigh and call off a hot date with the suitor of the month.
It turns into dates for the two of them more often than not; sometimes as Beatrice and Jay, going to the movies or to root for the Gotham Knights (Beatrice has the best tickets, of course, but Jay shows her the place where Jay used to stick out before, cramped and smelling frankly awful and no-one looking at them).
Sometimes as the Bat and Robin, and Jay loves that almost more, because they have to pretend they're not the Bat and Robin when they're Beatrice and Jay outside, but when they're the Bat and Robin they know they're Beatrice and Jay. The differences between them – Beatrice's voice, mostly – it's just even more of a kick for Jay. She knows something no-one else does. She knows the Bat breaks bones and makes bad guys piss themselves, and when they're waiting for the cops, the Bat pats Robin's head with her gauntleted hand, and tells her, well done, honey.
There's nothing above the Bat and Robin. Except saving people, and that's why tonight Beatrice is going out, even though Jay has been sulkier about it than she feel okay with being.
Beatrice has suspicions that Vic Vale got himself involved in all manners of shady business. Possibly he's being blackmailed by a drug-lord. Perhaps he's dug too deep into Penguin's affairs. Maybe they're particularly lucky and he'll turn out to be a robot implanted by hostile aliens to act as a spy before the invasion, and Jay will get to shoot his head off.
In any case Beatrice thinks he's involved in something, and for all that Jay thinks the only thing he's managed to get involved in is the office politics of his current job, she's learned that on things relating to the job, she's got to step back and listen to the expert. Which she does. Sort of.
Jay's going out tonight as well, as Robin, to cover for where Beatrice can't be, and she's already donned her outfit before she goes to Beatrice's room.
She flops on Beatrice's bed, the cape rumpling under her and the obscene thread-count of the cheets smooth like silk against her legs and her cheek, and twists until she's settled in a more comfortable position to look through the pack of photographs she's stolen from the archives. Sneaks a glance to the stool where Beatrice is putting her Bea Wayne on, Beatrice looks fucking gorgeous.
“Why the hell did you ever go blond, that's what I can't figure out,” she comments, flipping a photograph, a big, full-colour one where Beatrice is wearing a dress barely longer than Robin's shorts. “You ever think about switching back?”
“No.” She glances at the mirror to check what Jay is studying, and Jay, obligingly, uncrosses her legs and pulls up a photograph where Beatrice has one arm around the neck of Harriet Dent, and the other hooked through the arm of her date – probably a model or something like that. Beatrice's head is thrown back in a laugh that's got to be more than eighty percent faked: no woman laughs naturally by throwing her boobs forward. “Looking through these old things? I'd thought you'd find it boring.”
“Nope, I find it instructive.”
Silence falls over them. Robin's cape has been specially treated so that it doesn't rustle, so even when she shifts as well as she can, it goes almost quietly. If either of them was in the habit of breathing more loudly, it would go entirely unnoticed.
One of the pictures is a portrait of Beatrice, smiling provocatively at the viewer. The photo is black and white, making her then-fair hair look aggressively bleached, and her deep eyes look burning like ice in her make up. Jay calculates quickly. In the picture, Beatrice is closer to Jay's age than to her current age.
“Is it okay if I wanna dye my hair?”
Beatrice asks none of the parent questions, is is because of the photos? or why? “It'll be complicated, for Robin.”
“Oh.” Jay kicks at the end, in idle bitterness. “Right.”
“But it can be done. I don't see why Robin couldn't dye her hair. Or we can adjust the costume.”
“Costume's fine,” Jay says, fast before she takes leave of her senses and tell Beatrice how much the costume isn't fine, and she spreads to show how fine the costume is and she with it. She goes back and forth on that one anyway.
Beatrice's nod comes a fraction of second too late. You've got to know her as well as Jay does to notice. Then she resumes stroking her hair; “What color did you have in mind?”
It's not easy to shrug when you're laid down, so Jay props up on her elbows. “Dunno. It was just an idea. I think I'd like to dye my hair.”
Beatrice acquiesces again, then stands up. Gorgeous. Designer dress looks amazing, but Bea Wayne wearing the clothes of a famous designer does more for them than the clothes for her. “Come now, hon, we don't want to be late, hihi.”
The perfectly-made sheets don't resist Jay rolling down the bed, crumpling satisfyingly. She grouches, “you know I hate when you call me that. I'm Robin, goddamn it, and you're not that bimbo Bea Wayne.”
The thin smile curving Beatrice's lips is one hundred percent foreign to Bea Wayne.
“Let's get going, Robin,” she says, extending her hand, and she brushes Jay's cheek with her glove when Jay walks past her.
Another. Because you posted here and I got ~inspired
But even when Jay is with her, there's always something - the flashes of paparazzi, perhaps - to remind that "the Wayne heiress" (that's so fucking ridiculous, a woman in her late thirties and they're calling heiress like it's not hers) has been rumoured to have liaisons with more men than is fashionable even in this day and age. Even in her best long classy black dress, Beatrice is more Hedy Lamarr that Loretta Young.
At fundraisers they mostly wear long dresses, and gloves. Mostly long opera gloves that go up their elbows, half for the bruises and half for the drama. Beatrice's always are black velvet, coiled snuggly around her arms. She clenches a heavy diamond bracelet around her wrist, and wraps a flimsy gauzy shawl around her shoulders like it's a tease or for modesty, when in fact it's to cover the web of scars on her skin.
"Y'know, you could probably get them to think they're a new kind of body art. Newest trend. All the rage in Japan," Jay told her once, as she regarded Beatrice getting prepared.
"I do have Japanese business partners who'll know there's not a word true," Beatrice replied dryly, not taking her eyes away from her reflection.
Jay made a deliberately rude gesture. In the mirror a girl in a pretty if modest frock was pulling an unladylike face. "Your guys don't know jack about that. I'm talking pretend it's from Harajuku, not straight-laced Tokyo."
"No," Beatrice had said, and that was the end of it.
Then there's the days where Beatrice goes to work. Her wardrobe is filled with an army of powersuits - often pants, sometimes skirts - in fabric that Jay loves to rub against her cheek. (She's sure about the army of suits. Beatrice's wardrobe is only slightly smaller than the apartment Jay and her mom inhabited for three years.)
When she can, Jay watches B prepare herself then, too, pretending not to out of the corner of her eye. She gets behind Beatrice, all casual-like, and as Beatrice gathers her hair or touches her make-up, tugs on locks of hair, until the classy bun Beatrice ties her hair into comes undone, and Beatrice's hair rests on her shoulders.
She smiles, satisfied with her handiwork, and ignores the way Beatrice's eyebrows arch in the mirror as Beatrice starts fixing her hair again. The second time she attempts to loosen the hairdo, Beatrice's hand closes around her wrist. Without turning, Beatrice meets her eyes. “Stop that.”
“It's criminal, what you're doing with your hair,” Jay informs, again. Sometimes she swears, which Beatrice takes much less lightly than Jay's ruining of her hair-brushing efforts.
“If I don't pull them up they'll get in the way,” Beatrice says, level. “And the people I work with won't take me seriously.”
“It won't get in the goddamn way,” Jay retorts. “It doesn't get in the way when we're out together, does it?” Together, out, on the town; it all means the same. The Bat and Robin. A much truer persona than the dull woman whose clothing Beatrice puts on for the office.
“Beatrice Wayne pulls her hair up for the office because it gets in the way if she doesn't. Or because she wants her hairstyle to always look perfect.” Beatrice's let go of Jay's wrist, by this point, and she's started again arranging her hair how she sees fit.
Jay lets her hand fall back down. “I like you better when you're just Beatrice.”
The trick is to time it so Beatrice isn't completely done a-fixing her daytime mask.
“I know, honey.” Her hair is still thick locks being smoothed under the palms of Beatrice's hands, and her voice is only half Beatrice Wayne's. Half something else. Something true.
Once, Beatrice Wayne is going on a date. With Vic Vale, of all people. Jay hates when Beatrice goes on dates.
Usually, it's not an issue. The main if not only interest Beatrice finds in the men she has been frequenting is the good – or bad – it does for her reputation, which is the lowest priority on the scale Jay had been able to work out. At the top of the priority scale, there's the Mission. When it comes to saving someone, everything takes a step back. Just beneath it, there's Jay.
All Jay needs do is voice disappointment for Beatrice to sigh and call off a hot date with the suitor of the month.
It turns into dates for the two of them more often than not; sometimes as Beatrice and Jay, going to the movies or to root for the Gotham Knights (Beatrice has the best tickets, of course, but Jay shows her the place where Jay used to stick out before, cramped and smelling frankly awful and no-one looking at them).
Sometimes as the Bat and Robin, and Jay loves that almost more, because they have to pretend they're not the Bat and Robin when they're Beatrice and Jay outside, but when they're the Bat and Robin they know they're Beatrice and Jay. The differences between them – Beatrice's voice, mostly – it's just even more of a kick for Jay. She knows something no-one else does. She knows the Bat breaks bones and makes bad guys piss themselves, and when they're waiting for the cops, the Bat pats Robin's head with her gauntleted hand, and tells her, well done, honey.
There's nothing above the Bat and Robin. Except saving people, and that's why tonight Beatrice is going out, even though Jay has been sulkier about it than she feel okay with being.
Beatrice has suspicions that Vic Vale got himself involved in all manners of shady business. Possibly he's being blackmailed by a drug-lord. Perhaps he's dug too deep into Penguin's affairs. Maybe they're particularly lucky and he'll turn out to be a robot implanted by hostile aliens to act as a spy before the invasion, and Jay will get to shoot his head off.
In any case Beatrice thinks he's involved in something, and for all that Jay thinks the only thing he's managed to get involved in is the office politics of his current job, she's learned that on things relating to the job, she's got to step back and listen to the expert. Which she does. Sort of.
Jay's going out tonight as well, as Robin, to cover for where Beatrice can't be, and she's already donned her outfit before she goes to Beatrice's room.
She flops on Beatrice's bed, the cape rumpling under her and the obscene thread-count of the cheets smooth like silk against her legs and her cheek, and twists until she's settled in a more comfortable position to look through the pack of photographs she's stolen from the archives. Sneaks a glance to the stool where Beatrice is putting her Bea Wayne on, Beatrice looks fucking gorgeous.
“Why the hell did you ever go blond, that's what I can't figure out,” she comments, flipping a photograph, a big, full-colour one where Beatrice is wearing a dress barely longer than Robin's shorts. “You ever think about switching back?”
“No.” She glances at the mirror to check what Jay is studying, and Jay, obligingly, uncrosses her legs and pulls up a photograph where Beatrice has one arm around the neck of Harriet Dent, and the other hooked through the arm of her date – probably a model or something like that. Beatrice's head is thrown back in a laugh that's got to be more than eighty percent faked: no woman laughs naturally by throwing her boobs forward. “Looking through these old things? I'd thought you'd find it boring.”
“Nope, I find it instructive.”
Silence falls over them. Robin's cape has been specially treated so that it doesn't rustle, so even when she shifts as well as she can, it goes almost quietly. If either of them was in the habit of breathing more loudly, it would go entirely unnoticed.
One of the pictures is a portrait of Beatrice, smiling provocatively at the viewer. The photo is black and white, making her then-fair hair look aggressively bleached, and her deep eyes look burning like ice in her make up. Jay calculates quickly. In the picture, Beatrice is closer to Jay's age than to her current age.
“Is it okay if I wanna dye my hair?”
Beatrice asks none of the parent questions, is is because of the photos? or why? “It'll be complicated, for Robin.”
“Oh.” Jay kicks at the end, in idle bitterness. “Right.”
“But it can be done. I don't see why Robin couldn't dye her hair. Or we can adjust the costume.”
“Costume's fine,” Jay says, fast before she takes leave of her senses and tell Beatrice how much the costume isn't fine, and she spreads to show how fine the costume is and she with it. She goes back and forth on that one anyway.
Beatrice's nod comes a fraction of second too late. You've got to know her as well as Jay does to notice. Then she resumes stroking her hair; “What color did you have in mind?”
It's not easy to shrug when you're laid down, so Jay props up on her elbows. “Dunno. It was just an idea. I think I'd like to dye my hair.”
Beatrice acquiesces again, then stands up. Gorgeous. Designer dress looks amazing, but Bea Wayne wearing the clothes of a famous designer does more for them than the clothes for her. “Come now, hon, we don't want to be late, hihi.”
The perfectly-made sheets don't resist Jay rolling down the bed, crumpling satisfyingly. She grouches, “you know I hate when you call me that. I'm Robin, goddamn it, and you're not that bimbo Bea Wayne.”
The thin smile curving Beatrice's lips is one hundred percent foreign to Bea Wayne.
“Let's get going, Robin,” she says, extending her hand, and she brushes Jay's cheek with her glove when Jay walks past her.