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The Birthday Present	By : Kip Category: DC Verse Comics > Batman Views: 8478 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Batman series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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"We're entering the outskirts now, we should be there in a few more minutes." Bruce told Sandy, noticing how the younger man was staring fixedly out of the car window. "How does it feel to be nearly home?"
"This was never my home, I was only here because Julius wanted it that way." Sandy shrugged. "It wouldn’t bother me if I never saw any of this again."
"But you came? Because it was in the letter?"
The blond gave a deep sigh "I don’t suppose anyone will ever understand how I felt about Julius. I don’t really understand it myself. I didn’t love him, but I did care for him."
"You thought of him like a father?" Bruce supposed.
"Bruce!" That earned him a horrified stare. "There was nothing fatherly in the feelings that I had for Julius. I'm not into incest, thank you!"
"Sure?" Bruce grinned, glad to have been able to bring Sandy some relief from the melancholy that the blond had been sinking into ever since the letter had arrived from the lawyer's office. Sandy had cried over the small handwritten note from Julius that had been neatly tucked inside the formal request for the younger man to attend the reading of his benefactor's will.
"See those houses?" The blond waved at a row of modest homes. "Apparently Julius' father and grandfather built them and rented them out. Every time we drove through this part of town, Julius used to remind me that he still owned them."
"How many of them did Julius own?" Bruce asked, just out of interest.
"All of them."
"All?" Bruce was no stranger to money, but there had to be seventy houses along that stretch alone.
"And the next two or three blocks back from this road, each way." Sandy said mournfully. "Julius didn’t have any really big houses, but he did have a lot of them."
"My god, he must have owned half the town!"
"About a quarter," Sandy sighed. "And I worked as heavy labour in a meat factory, do you still wonder why I don’t feel like I fit in here?"

"Mr Collis, it's possible that you may never approve of me." Sandy said politely, evaluating the rather stern expression on the face of the man behind the desk. "But before we start, and whatever you might think, I have to tell you that I'd rather Julius were alive today than receive any sort of bequest from him."
"It isn't my place to approve or disapprove of clients, Mr Smith, or their associates." Walter Collis pursed his dry lips into a line. "If you are ready?"
"Isn't anyone else coming?" Sandy cast his eyes around the well‑appointed office.
"This is a private session, intended purely for you to hear Mr Wociek's request." Collis told him. "The outstanding company matters have already been dealt with."
"Oh."
"And I am pleased to tell you that you have more than exceeded Mr Wociek's first condition."
If he is pleased, the old man’s doing a damn good job of hiding it. That was Bruce’s immediate thought, along with the impression that the last time the elderly man had smiled was probably before the last World war; or the First? Or the Crimean?
"Condition?" Sandy was asking.
"I was instructed to hold off informing you of the full content of the will unless you specifically stated that you were not after financial remuneration."
"Money?" Sandy gave a cold laugh. "Julius knew me better than that. As long as I don’t need to go hungry again, that'll be enough for me."
"There is a second condition." The lawyer told him.
"There is?"
"I am instructed to tell you that you must purchase at least one formal dinner suit with the funds that Mr Wociek left for you. He asks that you wear it for at least four hours on the evening of the next anniversary of his birthday, and that during that time you drink at least one glass of red wine in his memory."
"Doesn’t want much, does he?" Bruce couldn’t believe it. The drink he could understand, but what sort of person asked someone to go out and buy a suit in their memory? And wear it? Especially considering that Sandy had spent most of his time in Julius's 'care' wandering around in the nude…
Or maybe that is exactly the point? That for those four hours no one else would be able to appreciate what Julius had so admired in life?
Bastard! Even beyond the grave he still wants to keep a bit of Sandy for himself!
"Mr Wociek's bequest would be considered generous by most people's standards." The lawyer said firmly. Adjusting his spectacles he peered over them. "I feel able to advise you that it would be very much in your interests to comply, Mr Smith, regardless of whatever … domestic arrangements … you might have adopted now."
"What are you implying?" Bruce couldn’t let that pass without comment.
"I am not implying anything, sir, merely noting that Mr Smith has seen fit to bring you here with him to witness what is usually considered a rather private matter." The other man observed. "Therefore we can assume that there is some connection between you, regardless of how casual it may be."
Casual … you rude bastard…
"Perhaps you think Sandy's after MY money now?" Bruce didn’t like what was so carefully not being said.
"Rather the other way around." Came the dry retort.

That was something that Bruce hadn't expected. He was dumbstruck. It had been so long since anyone had failed to recognise him, and now here was this little hick town lawyer accusing him of being a gold-digger. It was… it was…
Almost funny, if it hadn't been so insulting!
"I can assure you, that I'm not after Sandy's money… If he even has any." Bruce managed to say, keeping the laughter, and his temper, in check.
"Bruce, you know that whatever I have is yours." Sandy told him with a completely straight face. "I'd give you the shirt off my back if you asked."
"That's incredibly generous of you." Bruce retorted.
Collis sat there incredulously, watching as two fully grown men succumbed to a fit of the giggles in the middle of his office.
"Sorry!" Bruce apologised, once he got his breath back. "It's just … well, that's MY shirt that Sandy's wearing! Or at least it was one of mine, until this morning when he gave me the puppy dog eyes and snaffled it off me."
Sandy only grinned. "If you want it, have it back…" He said lightly, starting to undo the top button.
And he would… He'd strip down to his skin right now just to torment me!
"No! No…" Bruce said hurriedly. "Keep it! It’s yours!"
The pale eyes held a devil of mischief. "Sure?"
"Totally." Bruce told him. "Never been more sure of anything in my life. What's a shirt between friends?"
The twinkle in Sandy's eye was reward enough.
"Well done." The comment was sufficiently unexpected to faze even the normally unflappable Bruce. "Please do forgive my previous ill manners, however I was instructed to do whatever I deemed necessary to confirm that Mr Smith was in a beneficial relationship, before giving him access to the full breadth of the legacy. I believe that you have both just given me the final piece of proof that I needed."
"I really don’t understand." Sandy pulled himself up straight. "Would you please just tell me what it is that Julius left me?"
The old man shuffled the papers, and then set them down. "Everything."

"Everything?" Sandy didn’t seem any less confused.
Everything? Bruce was a step ahead of the blond, but no less surprised.
Wociek made Sandy his legal heir?
The old man pulled out several sheets of closely typed paper from the stack and passed them across the desk to Sandy. "I expect you will want to go over this for yourself, once the initial shock has abated?" He suggested. "However, this is a summary of the holdings owned by Mr Wociek at the time of his death."
"A summary?" Sandy blinked. "How much is there?"
The lawyer smiled, and rattled off a lengthy figure.
Stunned Sandy sat and listened in silence. "He left me all that?" He whispered.
"Oh no, that merely documents the available funds. The value of the company holdings runs to several times that amount." Collis told him. "Then of course there is the Real Estate. Mr Wociek owned substantial tracts of land, and property, and had also ventured into marine investments. I am in the process of obtaining a set of current valuations. You should have the true figure by the end of the week."
"I know about the houses." Sandy said absently, staring at the list. "Julius loved pointing them out while he was driving around."
"And did the pair of you ever travel beyond the county line?" The older man asked with studied politeness.
"Not really: Julius was a bit of a home body by the time I knew him." Passing the sheets back to Collis, Sandy blinked, distracted.
"Then you will not have seen more than a fraction of the holdings owned by Mr Wociek," Collis stated calmly. "Congratulations, Mr Smith. You are a very wealthy young man." He slipped the papers back into the manila folder and tied it closed. "Would I be correct in assuming that you will be transferring custody of your affairs to another law firm?"
For a few minutes Sandy merely sat there, then he shook himself. "Sorry?"
"I realise that our firm is not as upmarket as those in Gotham." Collis explained. "I assume that you will be taking your business there?"
Sandy blinked. "I don’t think so." He said at last. "Mr Collis, I know that Julius trusted you with everything, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t do the same. The account will stay here, at least for the present."
"You really intend to retain our services?" The older man sounded astonished.
"Yes." Sandy looked at him. "Unless you’re saying that you don’t want to work for me?" He fidgeted slightly.
"I must offer you an apology." Collis said, standing and spontaneously holding out his hand. "Apart from the tests that I was to administer, I truly thought that you were quite other than you are. I am delighted, and more than a little ashamed, to find that I have misjudged you."
"I probably didn’t make a very good impression when we met?" Sandy guessed, shaking the other man’s hand. He looked at Bruce. "The first time I met Mr Collis was after Julius and I had spent a day fishing from his yacht, and I had the worst case of windburn that I can ever remember, but Julius insisted that I wear something smart while meeting his lawyer; which meant of course it was all brand new, and still starched..."
"Painful?" Bruce guessed.
"Was it ever! I got up from dinner as soon as I could and spent the whole evening trying to stand at an angle whenever possible, to keep the collar from rubbing the back of my neck," Sandy recalled. "It must have looked very strange."
Collis nodded. "My immediate assumption was that you were taking some form of recreational drug." He admitted. "An impression that was only reinforced during our second meeting. You appeared most out of sorts that day."
"Oh yes! I'd forgotten about that!" Sandy leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "That was the week that the housekeeper decided to use a different washing powder on the laundry. It turned out that I was allergic to the stuff, but we didn’t notice at first because I never usually wore anything around the house, the effects only started to make themselves known about ten minutes before Mr Collis arrived, when it was far too late for me to go and change. By the end of the evening everything from my neck down was covered in red lumps." He laughed out loud. "Julius said he’d never seen such a bright red rash in his life! We must have used up three bottles of calamine before it started to calm down."
"And the third time?" Collis enquired.
"Third?" The blond looked at him blankly. "There was a third time?"
"I came to the house and you were lying on the sofa, partly covered by a blanket. Mr Wociek explained that you had contracted a fever and that he did not want to leave you by yourself, as you were delirious, and the medication was strong." The old man looked uncomfortable. "I am afraid that it only reinforced my previous assumptions, namely that you were under the influence of some narcotic substance…"
“Oh.” Sandy thought it over. "Would that have been last September?"
"Indeed."
"Then it was just like Julius told you. I picked up some sort of bug from somewhere, god knows how? I was sick for days! I do vaguely remember people being around me, but it was all like some horrible sort of dream." Sandy glanced across at the older man. "Thinking back on it, it must have looked pretty bad: the antibiotics the doctor gave me just about knocked me out. It was more than a week before I could get back on my feet, let alone feel anything like normal."
"And Julius stayed with you, all that time?" Bruce asked. Perhaps the dead man hadn't been all bad?
"That was how he was." Sandy shrugged. "Just when you thought you had him figured, he would suddenly do something so unexpected that you could hardly believe he was the same man."

* * * *

The house was modest by Gotham standards, well laid out, but pretentious for all that.
More a museum than a home though…
"Quite the collector wasn’t he?" Bruce walked along the rows of cabinets, reluctantly admiring the acquisitions of one man's lifetime.
"Yes, Julius loved beautiful things." Sandy answered absently.
I'll just bet he did. That was the moment that the final clue slotted into place for Bruce. Sandy had inadvertently paused in the beam cast by one of the small skylights, the sun gilding his hair and turning him into yet another of the works of art displayed in the long room.
And you were his greatest prize, weren’t you? A piece of living, communicating art, a moveable feast with the added spice of spontaneity and unpredictability; but he owned you just as much as any of his other treasures.
A chill ran through Bruce. He knew he was right; he could feel it in his gut. The same instincts that made him a corporate success and an almost unstoppable force in the fight for Justice, were telling him that Julius Wociek hadn't taken Sandy in for any altruistic reason: as a member of the business community, Bruce had seen the man's handiwork often enough to know that anything of that nature had been purely coincidental.
The old pervert probably couldn’t believe it when he saw you in his factory… a nearly perfect body holding a fragile and incredibly malleable mind! Little wonder he was so keen to help you rebuild yourself! With a set‑up like that he couldn’t go wrong! The more that Julius appeared to be selflessly doing something purely for Sandy's benefit, the more it improved the value of what Julius already held.
The soulless devil; may he rot in Hell! But perhaps the most terrible part of it was that Sandy still thought that Julius had cared for him in the same inwardly innocent way that Sandy had cared for the older man…
Could he have?

Bruce stared around at the silent legacy. Could I be misjudging the old bastard? Every inch of the room was filled with carefully documented artefacts, trophies to the dead man's determination and skill as a collector. Objets d'Art lined every shelf, occupied every pedestal, each of the neatly filled out labels proudly proclaiming ownership and possession.
No, the man I knew was the real Julius Wociek: the person who built this didn’t have those sorts of feelings. Looking around, Bruce recognised the signs only too well.
This place is a reflection of the man's personality, just as his business empire was before he retired. For Julius it was all about what HE could do, what he had… and could have whenever he wanted to touch it, hold it, or look at it; even if that was just the satisfaction of being able to deny it to others simply by possessing it. In that same instant Bruce knew that gaining the slightest understanding into the true motives of the dead man would be devastating for Sandy.
It would tear you apart if you found out, wouldn’t it? All the blond had wanted was love, and for a while Sandy must have thought that he had found it.
Which means that I can't ever tell you. Assuming you were to accept it as the truth, you certainly wouldn’t thank me for showing it to you. No one appreciates having their dreams destroyed … Besides what good would the truth be to you now? Even if what you had here was only an illusion, it was a lot closer than some ever get. It had certainly been real enough for Sandy: real enough to bring the younger man back to this dismal place.
No amount of money could compensate for that kind of loss … Sandy's had enough taken from him already; let him keep that at least…

"Bruce?"
With the decision made, Bruce took in a slow calming breath, composed his expression, and turned to face his friend. "Yes?"
"You alright?"
"Fine." He said, and, seeing the look of concern on his companion's face, meant it.
"Come on." Sandy slid an arm into his. "Let's get out of this awful place." He frowned. “I really shouldn’t say that, should I? Do you think that’s bad of me?”
"You can insult it all you want, it's yours now." Bruce reminded him. "What do you want to do with it?"
"What do I WANT to do with it, or what AM I going to do with it?" Sandy asked.
"Both."
"At once?"
Bruce ruffled the golden curls and growled at him. "No, you idiot!"

"Oh, in that case, I WANT to burn this house to the ground and scatter almost everything in it to the four winds." The blond said lightly. "What I am going to do with it is ask Mr Collis to sell it and start a Trust fund for the City Hospital with the proceeds."
"City Hospital, eh?"
"Yes." Sandy was pensive. "That way maybe someone else won't have to go through what I did when I woke up here?"
"You did say 'almost everything', so purely out of interest, what would you keep?" He looked around. There were some quite attractive items in the collection. But what would Sandy choose?
"None of it." Sandy smiled. "The lady who was Julius' housekeeper was always very nice to me. She's fond of pots, so I think I'll give her a couple as a keepsake."
"Pots?" Bruce waited.
"Oh yes … Julius had just started collecting those: they're in a cabinet in the next room." The blond held up a key from the ring that he had been given. "The housekeeper liked the one with the red bits on it, and there was another one … although I thought it was rather ugly myself."
"Ugly?"
"Yes." Sandy gave up trying to find the key. "Come on, She'll know which key it is. We all can go in there together, and I can give them to her. I'd like to see her happy."
"What sort of pots do you mean, Sandy? China or clay?" Or something else? A collection this extensive and valuable, it couldn’t be … could it?
"I don’t know." Sandy shrugged. "I never did get around to reading about them. Something with a fruit name…"
Astonished, Bruce turned around and stared at his companion, "Not Satsuma?"
"Yes! That's it!" Sandy grinned. "You are so smart, Bruce! How do you remember all those things all the time?"
Bruce flushed a little at the generous praise.

A short while later, they were both more than ready to leave. The housekeeper had proved pleasant, and effusively grateful for the gifts, but only one person held the slightest interest for Bruce at the moment. Apparently his companion was thinking along the same lines as Bruce found himself being regarded with warm affection.
"What's on your mind, Blondie?" He teased lightly.
"I rather fancy kissing you," Sandy confessed. "Do you suppose you might possibly feel in the mood?"
"I might be persuaded." Bruce rubbed his hand along Sandy's sleeve. "With the right incentive…" Which right now could be just about anything other than a definite 'no'…
"But not in here." Sandy decided. "I don’t want to spend another minute in this house, and I certainly don’t want it associated with any memories of the two of us."
"Then let's go home?" Bruce suggested hopefully. "Do you think you can hold onto the mood for that long?"
Sandy thought it over. "Do I have to?" He asked ingenuously. "Ever since I first sat in your limo, I've fancied giving you a really thorough blowjob in the back seat. We could pull the curtains. Alfred will never know."
"Alfred will pretend not to know." Bruce reminded him. "But I'll know that he does."
Tempting though… He felt a definite urge coming on. Perhaps if they had the sound system playing? The road surfaces were rough enough to cover moderate activity, providing it didn’t get too energetic...
I can’t believe I’m even considering it! Let alone coming up with ways of making it possible... But having kicked in, his imagination wouldn’t be so easily thwarted.
Resist… He told himself sternly. You can't just … not like that … it wouldn’t be right …
"How about if I promise to be very gentle with you?" Sandy whispered. "Would that change your mind?"
Apparently it would.
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The Birthday Present