Danny moves to Gotham after spending his whole life in Amity Park. He becomes the King of the Infinite Realms and flees to Gotham after his parents find out he’s a ghost.

And it starts out great. He enrolls in Gotham University, moves into his campus apartment, signs up for the extensive benefits the local billionaire supports for GU students, and volunteers on the weekends. He even feeds the strays!

It’s great! Actually, even better than great: Clockwork teaches him more about his ghost side while he’s there and can safely explore it without the risk of getting caught and vivisected. He can work on powers he barely knows he has… and that includes shapeshifting.

And shapeshifting is easier to start with smaller body parts. Like ears.

Like cat ears.

So he gives that a go and, well, if he decides he likes them and keeps them longer than the supposed training time then that’s his business.

He spends his first semester of his aerospace engineering major enjoying his freedom for the first time. No food trying to bit him back, no threat of death around every corner. He makes friends and drinks for the first time. He explores the nightlife and learns to not, in fact, explore Gotham nightlife. He realizes he may not be as bad at school as he thought, and then he actually starts to believe it.

At the end of the first semester he’s a well-known face around campus. He’s tall, ethereally beautiful, and a STEM prodigy with multiple professors practically begging to mentor him.

And it doesn’t hurt that four different people swear up and down to have seen cat ears in his hair when he bent over.

He’s practically the talk of the town (not that he knows it).

But he does know that he starts to perfect the look: along with ears, he sharpens his fangs. He growls when he’s annoyed and purrs when he’s happy. Sometimes he plays into it even more, like slow blinking and keeping a healthy distance to any dogs.

One thing that’s for sure, cats know whats up with that “laying in patches of sun” stuff. He started doing that and when he realized how nice it was he just couldn’t stop. He can be seen all around campus laying in the sunlight when it’s nice out (whenever that is. Gotham is overcast to it’s core).

He lounges beautiful and stretched out and sleepy for everyone to see.

And… wouldn’t you know, he starts to get an admirer.

Well, don’t get him wrong, he’s had more than enough of those, but this one stood out. He was… cute. Very cute.

A lit major who obviously worked out religiously, who hovered around the corners of Danny’s life. He sees him around campus (obviously), looking a bit too long even for someone admiring his prettiness, and then a few times at the cafe Danny worked at, and then a few times more around town. More than a few. More than was reasonable, actually. Definitely not an accident.

A cute little stalker, Danny thought every time he saw him out of the corner of his eye. He suppresses the urge to laugh (or purr).

A very cute, not-so-little stalker.

Hm.

There were definitely worse things.

The bats are a breakaway sect of the royal family of a new rebel nation. The revolution was a long time coming: the country had been full of corrupt leaders, bribery and theft, crumbling with rot from the inside out. It was ruined to the highest levels and there was simply no hope for reform.

So the rebelled with everything they had. And they won.

They won, and now they’re the new kings. And by God they’re not going to let it go to waste.

They have their hands full, too. Between securing their independence, reconstruction, trade agreements, and creating policy to navigate their growing power on the international stage, they’re almost always busy.

But it’s still slow coming.

In some ways, really slow.

The only thing they’re lacking is… well, actual recognition. As far as they’ve come, as much change as they’ve made, the older countries still won’t see them as anything more than a child’s rebellion. A mistake to be fixed in time.

It makes everything else harder. No one wants to trade with a rebel group, or recognize their borders, or ally with them, or allow inter-country civilian travel. Everything gets put in slow motion because of that one little lacking piece: legitimacy.

It’s annoying. It’s irritating. it’s demeaning and belittling and downright incorrect. But it still does so, so much damage and there’s no much they can do but work with it.

Except, when a faraway, powerful nation offers a trade agreement in exchange for one of the children’s hand in marriage. A rich warrior nation with a relatively new king was looking for a trade foothold and a bride.

(This is a misunderstanding. They thought that the bats would demand it to help their legitimacy, and the bats thought they were demanding it to have a true-blooded royal marry into their warrior nation’s family.) (Which is basically both of them thinking the other wants to marry them for recognition reasons which is funny but anyway lol)

And Bruce opposes it. Oh, he tries to tear up the official letter more than once, especially after his kids start to really consider it. It was ridiculous!

But it was true, that they worked so hard for this. Their people trusted them and counted on them. This trade would stabilize their economy and the marriage would give them power and legitimacy, everything they wanted.

It was all in the palm of their hand. Everything. Everything.

All they had to do was… well.

Put on a ring.