Lex brings toddler Kon to Gotham the way a scholar might transport a volatile artifact—contained, catalogued, and one heartbeat away from detonating into chaos. The safety harness—red, padded, humiliatingly adorable—keeps Kon from floating more than a foot off the ground. He drifts anyway, buoyed by some internal joy that refuses to obey gravity.
The gala hall is a cavern of marble and chandeliers, full of Gotham’s usual perfume of money and unease. Bruce sees them enter, Lex gliding with the stiff caution of a man who has anticipated disaster so thoroughly he almost welcomes it, and Kon, humming, weightless, tethered like a wayward balloon.
Bruce steps toward them, face unreadable.
“Why is your kid on a leash?”
“It is not a leash,” Lex replies without turning his head. His tone is a scalpel. “It is a safety harness. Do you imagine I would enter this crime-ridden monument to poor planning without ensuring my son is not abducted by your local fauna?”
Kon scratches the side of his head with his foot, still floating.
Bruce stares. “That is a leash.”
Lex gives the lead a curt tug. “Kon. Feet. Down.”
Kon giggles and rotates midair like a lazy planet.
Bruce spells it out. “l-e-a-s-h.”
Lex’s jaw clenches so hard it could cut glass. “Grow up, Bruce.”
Just then a shriek rings from across the hall. Not fear—outrage. A guest points upward, scandalized.
Bruce tilts his head. One of the enormous velvet drapes is swaying wildly near the ceiling, billowing in a way fabric should not billow unless someone—some small, extremely determined someone—is climbing it like a living mountain.
Lex cuts Bruce a murderous look. “…Is that your child?”
Bruce doesn’t bother looking. “He is enriching himself.”
“You have a child climbing eighty feet of drapery.”
“Self-directed learning,” Bruce says.
Lex blinks once, twice, as if recalibrating the universe. “You called me irresponsible.”
Before Bruce can retort, Kon’s eyes light up—bright, delighted, terminally reckless. “Climb?” he chirps, and rockets upward so suddenly that Lex is nearly yanked off his feet, dragged skyward by the leash he insists is not a leash.
“Kon! Descend this instant!” Lex’s voice goes shrill in a way only terror can produce.
The drapery sways harder. Kon arrives near the top, greets the mysterious drapery-climber with a cheerful “Hi!” and immediately grabs the fabric to join the ascent.
Bruce finally looks up and sighs with the resignation of a man who has accepted that physics will always choose violence in his presence.
Lex is still being dragged upward, shoes scraping against polished floor, dignity dying a slow, agonized death. “Bruce! Help me!”
“I told you,” Bruce says, moving with grim inevitability, “it’s a leash.”
“It is a safety harness and I swear—Kon, if you tear that fabric I will—”
The chandelier groans. The drapes quiver. There is a brief, suspended moment—still, sharp, as if the world inhales.
And then the entire upper fixture gives way.
Two small bodies fall, laughing as if plummeting is a game invented for them.
Bruce catches Dick. Lex catches the other, barely, collapsing backward with Kon curled against his chest—warm, heavy, safe.
Kon beams at him. “Again!”
Lex closes his eyes. “Absolutely not.”
Bruce dusts off his own kid and murmurs, “At least mine doesn’t need a leash.”
Lex glares at him over Kon’s wild hair. “Say ‘leash’ one more time,” he snarls, “and I will sue the chandelier manufacturer, the drape supplier, this building’s architect, and you.”
Bruce lifts a brow. “In Gotham? Get in line.”
Kon, blissfully unaware of parental warfare, hugs Lex’s neck. “Fun.”
Lex exhales, defeated but holding him tighter. “…This is why I use the harness.”
Bruce says nothing. His silence, somehow, is worse.
Lex scowls. “Not. A. Leash.”
Later—after the adults finish arguing in low, lethal voices about structural integrity, liability, and whether Gotham’s chandeliers are built to code—the two boys are set down on a quiet balcony overlooking the city. It’s meant to calm them.
Kon dangles his legs off the stone ledge, humming. Dick sits beside him, bruised only in the way that children are—more exhilaration than injury, adrenaline fizzing through his small bones.
“You climb good,” Kon says solemnly, as if offering a diplomatic commendation.
Dick brightens. “Thanks! You float good. You look like a balloon. But, like… a cool balloon. A superhero balloon.”
Kon beams. “Papa says no floating inside buildings. I forget sometimes.”
“I forget rules all the time,” Dick confesses. Then, conspiratorially: “Bruce says I need supervision.”
“What’s supervision?” Kon asks.
“It’s like… when they stare at you real hard so you don’t die.”
Kon thinks about this, eyes narrowing in concentration. “Papa stares a lot.”
They share a small, solemn nod—for the burden of being small and fast and too alive in a world designed for slower creatures.
Dick leans closer. “Hey. When you grabbed the drape with me? That was awesome.”
Kon kicks his feet. “It was fun. You weren’t scared.”
“I had the harness,” Kon says, matter-of-fact, tugging at the strap around his chest. “Papa hates it.”
Dick grins, wicked and bright. “Bruce hates mine too.”
Kon blinks. “You have one?”
“Yeah,” Dick says. “It’s invisible. It’s called ‘Don’t embarrass me in public.’ It’s worse.”
Kon gasps. “Invisible leash?? That’s terrible.”
“Yeah,” Dick sighs dramatically. “He doesn’t let me swing off monuments unless he’s the only adult watching.”
Kon considers this with the seriousness of a philosopher. “We should trade.”
“You get the leash,” Kon says, patting his chest. “I get the invisible one. Papa won’t see it.”
Dick’s laugh echoes over the rooftops—bright, irrepressible. “Deal!”
They bump their foreheads together like they’ve invented a pact.
Below, Bruce and Lex both look up at the sound—two men carved from tension and mutual disdain—and find their respective sons perched shoulder-to-shoulder on the balcony edge, swinging their legs in perfect, uncanny synchrony.
Bruce mutters, “They’re bonding.”
Lex mutters, “This is a disaster.”
Above them, the boys lean closer, whispering like conspirators.
“Next time,” Dick says, “we should climb the outside of the building.”
Kon’s grin goes incandescent. “Yes. And float.”
Another solemn nod. A shared oath between tiny agents of entropy.
Somewhere deep inside the ballroom, a chandelier creaks ominously—as if already aware it’s doomed.
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