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It’s at times like these where Kyle wonders about the point of even having a learner driver program.
Every single person in this damn city has been illegally driving since childhood, and he knows for a fact that most people in Gotham view road rules as more of a kindly suggestion to be ignored rather than the damn law. As a result, it has become less of an opinion and more of a deep-seated faith that Kyle, and by extension, his department of the local government, is the only thing stopping these kids from becoming either speed demons or bloody smears on the pavement.
At this point, he honestly thinks it would be safer of they stopped handing out licenses entirely, and redirected all the money to fund public transport instead, so these poor children stand a chance of living to retirement age.
But he can’t, because he is a minimum wage employee, really, really, heckin’ poor, and has about as much influence over politics as the average chicken nugget does.
Which means he’s here, stuck behind a desk as the last bastion of morality against the inevitable tide of car crash statistics that comes with not doing his job properly.
And whatever deity is up there is not smiling kindly down upon Kyle.
Not today, at least.
Standing in front of his counter is Bruce Wayne (Bruce Wayne!), hand clasped on the shoulder of his beaming ward, Dirk. Maybe. Or something. Kyle doesn’t really keep up with the celebrity gossip. Either way, Dirk (as Kyle shall be calling him henceforth) is finally sixteen according to the paperwork in front of him, and is here to hand in the evidence of the required one hundred state-mandated hours of supervised driving required to get a license.
The logbook, splayed open in front of Kyle, is what is making him lose faith in humanity.
“It also says here that the vehicle you did your hours in is…” Here, Kyle just sighs. “The Batmobile. Very funny. You’re the fourth group to say that this week alone.”
“But it’s only Tuesday?” Dirk pipes up.
“Yes.” There might be a tear in his eye. Or a bit of dust. He’s not thinking too hard about it. The choice was work in a minimum-wage people-facing job, or become a henchman. Kyle’s only been working here for three weeks but he’s already considering the benefits of turning to a life of crime voluntarily, before he wakes up one morning and violence is the only option he has left.
“I’m… sorry?”
You should be, Kye very nearly says. But he doesn’t, because he is an exemplary, gold star employee with excellent self-restraint, even if his annual pay, working conditions and end-of-year bonus doesn’t reflect that fact.
Fortunately for Bruce Wayne, Kyle clearly isn’t paid enough to deal with this shit. He’s seen worse. He’s dealt with worse.
And, moments later, he realises that this is, in fact, worse.
“You only took-,” Kyle squints at the logbook page before him, “-three days… to do the full one hundred hours. Of supervised practice driving.”
Now, Kyle might not have done that well in high school math, props to Gotham’s public school system and the way the infrastructure gets blasted to bits every couple years. But, one hundred hours of practice driving in seventy-two hours? The math is not mathing.
Sizing up the pair in front of him, he debates the merits of pursuing these issues further.
One. He follows it up, and Bruce Wayne destroys his life with the flick of a finger.
Two. He lets it go and Dirk (Dick, the paperwork says, how unfortunate for him) gets turned into a paste on the side of the highway in under a month, woefully bereft of the adequate experience he needs to survive in this cruel world.
Bruce, who somehow looks even better in real life than he does through a camera - which is frankly very unfair - maintains their impromptu staring competition for another couple counts, before his eyes jump down to Kyle’s nametag, an old one he nicked from his boss reading ‘HELLO MY NAME IS brian’.
Oh no. He’s looking for personal identification.
Is Kyle about to get fired? No one that rich has morals, it’s simply not possible. Not in the wider world, and certainly not in Gotham. They’re going to leave unsatisfied, and then Kyle’s going to suffer as a result.
“So? Is that it? Do I get my license now?” Before him, Dick smiles beatifically up at Kyle, and Kyle instantly classifies him as a cinnamon roll that must be protected at all costs.
Forcibly quenching his internal panic, he grits his teeth.
Is it worth it?
It is worth it, to know that he was responsible for sending this, young, bright boy out into the real world, with such terribly forged documents? It prickles at him.
But then, he realises, there is in fact one, last thing he can do, something that doesn’t bring attention to the forgeries that could implicate him, and yet still means Dick Grayson might get a somewhat acceptable road education. It could be a partial victory, but a victory nonetheless.
“Almost!” Kyle says with biting placidity. His smile is so forced it hurts. “Before you can receive the full license, your son needs six hours of driving instruction with an accredited instructor. I can provide you with a list of local-”
“Dick,” Bruce interrupts with aplomb one might announce that grass is green, “-Is a very skilled driver. Is there any way to convince you that these lessons are, well, unnecessary?” There’s a rustle under the table, and for a moment Kyle wonders if he has just had a gun drawn on him, again.
Another rustle, and no, it is not a gun, just more money than Kyle makes in a week in crisp, fresh hundreds.
Bruce Wayne smiles harder, and Kyle officially decides that he doesn’t like this guy.
Kyle is the last frontier, the last stand, the one preventing teeny tiny, overconfident little baby drivers from getting turned into a smear on the tarmac. And Kyle refuses to let Dick Grayson, who apparently did one hundred straight hours of practice driving in seventy-two hours, looking up at him with glistening baby-blue eyes, from being turned into roadkill.
“Sir,” Kyle says, ignoring the ridiculous amount of cash being offered, “the six hours with a driving instructor is mandatory, no matter how skilled the driver in question is. It’s the law.”
The amount of money in Wayne’s hand triples. “C’mon, Brian,” he laughs jovially, “This is Gotham! Loosen up a little.”
Kyle raises an eyebrow.
Yeah, this is Gotham. The city of spite and poor life decisions. This classifies as both, and no amount of interpersonal rapport-building is going to get Wayne out of this.
A subtle wink and a shuffle, and Wayne doubles the money being offered once again. It’s now a truly staggering, near life-changing amount, but Kyle has found after a life of living in Gotham, spite is more powerful than any amount of money.
In hindsight, as Kyle watches them leave defeated, Bruce should have used a gun. It would have been way more convincing.
Marjorie would consider herself a veteran driving instructor. A born and bred Gothamite, she’s seen her fair share of the terrifyingly bad and terrifyingly confident drivers her city has to offer.
Unfortunately, she is also bound by her morals (grey as they may be) to do her utmost to deliver a well-rounded and effective education unto the youth she teaches. Driving is an incredibly important skill in this day and age, especially so in Gotham, where using the train is simply asking to get mugged or caught in a rogue attack. No, driving is much safer, even if most of the people around her drive like they’ve never heard what a ‘brake’ pedal is.
Hell, Marjorie would be considered a bit of a ‘lawless’ driver herself, by outsider standards. But, they’re in Gotham, so it doesn’t count.
Her new charge, Richard, is a consummate sweetheart, even if he insists on being called a more vulgar nickname.
It’s up to her to ensure that he’ll be able to get around Gotham with minimal property damage, and maybe, potentially, even pass that driver’s test.
Unfortunately for her, Marjorie could never have predicted how Richard would change behind the wheel. The moment he shifts the car into ‘Drive’, Dick well and truly starts living up to his name.
It’s the worst forty-five minutes of her life.
Years and years of experience, and Bruce Wayne himself couldn’t convince Marjorie to step back into the car with that little devil. Which is exactly what Bruce Wayne himself is currently trying to do.
“-only an hour,” Mr. Wayne was saying, brow furrowed. “I thought I paid for the full six?”
See, he did. But Marjorie wants to eventually retire, and to do that, she has to be among the living in order to see that happen. On that note, she will be keeping the other five hours-worth of payment for mental health fees. He’s a billionaire. He can spare a couple hundred dollars.
“-have five hours left. Ms. Marjorie, are you alright?”
His warm timbre cuts through her daze, and brings her back into the present.
“We saw Condiment King crossing the road,” Marjorie takes a shaky breath, calming herself. Despite the Buddhist mantras she had been mumbling under her breath on the drive back, she still fails to keep the justified hysteria out of her next sentence, “And he sped up! ”
“I was doing a service to humanity,” Dick says from where he’d been banished to the back seat forty-five minutes into their drive. “I refuse to be slandered for my actions.”
“Dick.” Bruce chides.
“What? It doesn’t even matter! I missed!” For some reason, he sounds put out at the lack of vehicular manslaughter, and Marjorie can’t hold back the strangled noise in her throat any longer.
“Here-,” she starts, repressing the bubbling hysteria in her gut, “-is the list of things your son ignored on this short drive. This includes, but is not limited to, the lines on the road, the speed limit, nearby pedestrians, the brake pedal, my insurance policy-”
“-How was I supposed to know you’re supposed to actually stay in a lane!” Dick interupts her with a whine, finally clambering out of where he’s been lounging in the back seat of Marjorie’s car. “The lines are arbitrary and stupid, and if there’s a space between two cars, why can’t I just gun in between them?”
What’s even worse, is that Bruce Wayne seems to be nodding along, like these actions are completely sensible and rational ways to act on the road. As Marjorie watches, they have a strange unspoken conversation through body language alone, which Bruce wins from the looks of it.
“Look,” Bruce’s shoulders slump, and he pulls out a wad of cash from some unseen pocket in a manner best described as resigned. “You’re the best Gotham has to offer. Dick has promised to behave for the rest of the period, so won’t you reconsider-?”
“No.”
With a flourish, Bruce quadruples the money being offered to her. It’s enough to pay her rent for months, to change her life in the best of ways. But…
Marjorie needs to be alive to do that.
If she spends another five hours in the car with Dick Grayson, she probably won’t be.
Bruce might reward her fiscally for teaching his son for the full six hours, but Marjorie thinks that never being in a car with Dick Grayson ever again will be reward enough.
“Apparently she doesn’t appreciate the art of drifting,” Lizzie faintly hears Dick say. He might be standing right next to her, but her heart is pounding in her ears too hard to hear every syllable. Her stomach spasms again, and she clutches the rim of the bin she’s hunched over a little harder. “It was perfect form, some of my best work. I even made an effort to follow those lines on the road this time.”
A shiver goes down her spine. ‘Made an effort,’ he says. If that's what he calls an effort, she’d hate to see what he’s like when he’s not trying.
This morning, Lizzie woke up with both her cats snuggled up against her. So cute. She received some positive feedback on a difficult section of her thesis, and her favourite barista at her local coffee place asked for her number. It was turning out to be an amazing day.
Now, she’s gagging over a maggot-infested trash can somewhere in Burnley and Bruce Wayne himself is holding back her hair. Her vision is blurry, and she genuinely cannot tell whether it’s due to the pungent fumes of the biohazard-like qualities of Gotham trash, the force of her retching or the grief of having been in the passenger seat of Dick Grayson.
Another wave of nausea rises and she gags for the umpteenth time.
A heavy hand lands on her shoulder, quiet and comforting. “Take all the time you need,” Bruce Wayne’s deep timbre says from behind her. “Dick can get a bit enthusiastic when it comes to driving.”
Enthusiastic, he says.
Dick needed more than a couple of hints to use the break pedal. In all honesty, she could have held him a seminar and it wouldn’t have made a damn difference.
Lizzie uneats the rest of her lunch into the bin.
Helen is having the worst day of her life.
Become a driving instructor, they said. No danger and good pay, they said.
“DID YOU EVEN PASS THE TEST?“ Helen’s voice is nearing a shriek. She can feel her voice box vibrating in her throat. She’s going to have to take a throat-soothing lozenge later. “YOU’RE GOING TO KILL US!”
Behind them, the wailing of the sirens are only drowned out by the wailing of Helen’s headache.
Dick may be an incredibly skilled driver, but this skill comes at the cost of making Helen debate whether throwing up or jumping out the window would make her feel better. He’s making her battered old car seem like it’s been retrofitted with a jet engine, and making moves that she’s only ever seen on a television screen.
Alas, this appears to be at the cost of every inkling of self-preservation this boy possesses.
“LEAVE AT LEAST A FULL CAR-LENGTH BETWEEN YOU AND THE CAR IN FRONT,” she barks, panicked. “THIS ISN’T MARIO KART, FOR GOODNESS SAKE.”
Dick, who has left at most thirty centimeters between them and the car in front, pokes his tongue out at her, and goes up the curb, and then sideways along a wall on an angle, niftily maneuvering the car past the congestion with minimal effort and maximum risk.
This is why natural selection exists, she can’t help but think.
They continue to ignore the speed limit, the lines on the road and common basic human decency, the flashing red-blue lighting combination of the traffic police evident in the rear-view mirror.
Helen is going to have a stress-induced seizure at this rate.
“We’ll be fiiiine,” Dick is unfairly nonchalant despite the entire police-chase situation, banking the steering wheel to the left so hard that the car does a lateral spin at a speed that must be nearly twice the speed limit, landing in the opposite lane of traffic. Of course, he then guns the pedal to the metal, and floors it out of there, maneuvering through the surrounding vehicles at a speed faster than the average Rule 34 artist.
“INDICATE, YOU STUPID CHILD,” Helen screeches, holding onto the passenger roof handle for dear life. She’s going to need multiple lozenges after this. Is it possible to overdose on throat lozenges?
“INDICATORS ARE FOR RETIREES AND PEOPLE WITHOUT REFLEXES.”
“I’M NOT GOING TO GET TO RETIRE IF YOU DON’T START USING THE DAMN TURN SIGNAL-”
Tom, the latest driving instructor in Dick Grayson’s growing list of instructors, was informed that his newest student was a very efficient driver.
His first mistake was making an assumption on what that actually meant. His second mistake? Getting in the car with that little demon behind the wheel. It’s only been an hour, but Tom had taken control of the car back during a strategic bathroom pit-stop (the only thing preventing him from soiling his seat covers), and outright refused to let Dick back in the driver’s seat. They make their way back to the meeting spot in silence, while his student furiously texts his guardian (Bruce Wayne, presumably) in the back seat.
When they pull up to the meeting spot, Bruce Wayne is already waiting there, not a hair out of place. Tom, who has just lost decades off his life thanks to this brat, feels like he’s just hoisted himself out of a garbage dump in comparison.
“When you said he was efficient,” Tom starts slowly, “I assumed you meant he had excellent fuel control. We’re talking miles per tank. That’s what efficiency means, when you’re talking about driving.”
Bruce Wayne at least has the decency to wince. Good.
“So,” here, Tom’s voice cracks, “maybe you should specify efficiency with a focus on time, because I would appreciate a warning before I hop in a car with a literal psychopath.”
“Hey!” Dick says from the back seat. He gets ignored.
“He didn’t dip below eighty, ever! The entire drive! He was going twice the speed limit! I saw my life flash before my eyes! I didn’t survive the Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy team-up last Thursday to be taken out by a random teenager!”
“I’m so sorry,” Bruce says. “Is there-”
Tom bursts into noisy tears.
Charles has seen a lot of bad drivers over his years of instructing the youth of Gotham, but this has to take the metaphorical cake.
His newest client, the son of the legendary Bruce Wayne, is breaking a lot of personal records for him today, and only a sparse few are good ones.
“So that's what those weird signs with numbers mean!” Dick is gushing from beside him, while Charles takes the time to rearrange his worldview. “No wonder why you were pointing at that weird gauge behind the steering wheel so much!”
As it turns out, Dick Grayson had no idea what a speed limit was.
“Now you’ve learnt what they mean,” Charles starts, “Work on following them. With your next instructor, that is, now that I’m down for the count.”
He looks at his student encouragingly, only to find him looking back with a glint in his eye that Charles isn’t exactly sure he likes. “I know it’s like, for safety and stuff,” Dick says, puppy-dog eyes on full display, “but it’s so boring, going that slow, and I can do so much better without one! This was just a fluke, I promise, this doesn’t usually happen, so next time-!”
“No. Follow the speed limit.”
Eventually, Dick acquiesces.
Charles takes a deep breath. “Dick,” he says seriously. “I need to know. Did you forge the documentation for the one hundred hours of driving practice.” It’s not a question.
Dick cocks his head in a distinctly bird-like manner. “What makes you think that?” He asks innocently.
Behind them, the smouldering remains of Charles’ car bursts into a roaring conflagration, searing his retinas. The shockwave from the explosion nearly knocks his glasses off. He really hopes his insurance will cover that.
“No clue,” he says eventually, “Just a hunch.”
They’re going 120mph in a 60 zone, smoothly weaving through packed traffic with the brazen overconfidence of a stunt driver. This time, Bruce is driving. In the passenger seat, Dick is slumped halfway down the seat, arms crossed and sulking. His seat belt isn’t on.
“Chum,” Bruce says eventually. “They’re wrong. In fact, I think your driving is amazing.”
As he says this, Bruce veers onto a footpath to dodge a motorcycle by a hair, gaining air time from the speed that they hit the curb. The suspension dampens the landing, and tyres screech on the tarmac as they regain traction, jerking the entire car forward with the sudden burst of speed.
Dick, unusually repressed, sighs heavily. “I really thought I wouldn’t have to hack the database again,” he gripes, running a hand down his face. “Couldn’t you have just bribed that Brian dude with more money?”
“Sometimes,” Bruce says sagely, “No amount of money can change the minds of the stubborn.”
With that, they sit in silence, until Bruce nearly hits several pedestrians. “Bet you I can hit the Joker with the Batmobile next time he breaks out of Arkham,” he says with a wry grin.
Predictably, Dick finally perks up at the mention of potential vehicular manslaughter. “Not if I do it first!”
“You're on.”