multiversallogs | ( citizens should not fear their government. this will be enforced. )

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( citizens should not fear their government. this will be enforced. )

Who: Seoraj & Bruce
What: Some furniture moving, some lunch, some social awkwardness. (Bruce.)
Where: Starting in Bruce's Bonetown apartment.
When: Sukkardi, midday.
Warnings: None currently.

No matter how strong you are, spending a morning moving furniture (and up stairs, which is about as much fun as trying to get a goat to back down them, not that this is something he's ever actually done) is a pain in the arse. It could be worse, and for all that he's quiet and a bit of an odd thing, Tom's sort of good company; curious company, anyway. Seoraj isn't entirely sure what to make of him - sometimes he's sure they're getting on, and conversation is easy (if sometimes strange), and then other moments he can't tell what's going on in the other man's head but he can tell he's not invited to the party.

He's mostly opted to err on the side of letting Tom tell him to push off if he wants to. He hasn't, yet.

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That reaction is more strange and alarming than being called on it, and though Bruce doesn't flinch, he does go tense for a moment - it's pretty damn rare for anyone to surprise Batman, but no, he was not expecting that. His expression is momentarily one of a cat being scooped up and tossed, wide-eyed and internally reeling for purchase, but he recovers in a heartbeat and tolerates it impressively - even laughs a little, though it's with a self-depreciating wince to it.

(His body language isn't displaying discomfort; he's fine. Just. Not used to being anyone's comrade.)

When they're seated - wooden table in a semi-circle of a booth, seats covered in the hide of some creature he can't actually identify, low-slung oil lamps - he immediately orders tea, whatever the waitress is fond of pending it isn't deadly to humans. His period of silent grudging behavior over tea that isn't made by Alfred has passed.

As good as Seoraj is at reading people, he's not so good he can read past someone who's quite so in control of his own body language that way and he misses any real alarm -- surprise, he registers that in the tension, but Tom strikes him as the sort and he thinks not much of it, just that his new friend is perhaps not the most social of creatures. He'd figured that one out on his own already, and he's not holding it against him.

He orders a different tea blend, just for the sake of variety (he's not going to ask to taste Bruce's drink, he's just, you know, going to appreciate the varied smells), and settles into his seat here on this strange leather with these low lamps in a way that's more comfortable than he often is, found in Baedal's more acceptably modern/human environs. It's still alien, but it's oddly more familiar, too, and he takes what he can get that way.

When he starts to go over the menu, he takes his time about it carefully-- sounding words out under his breath, reading with his lips moving.

Bruce observes this without anything even near judgment; they're clearly the mannerisms of someone who isn't terribly practiced at reading, but that's not wholly surprising given what Seoraj professes to be his profession and lifestyle. It is interesting though, someone that curious about life - maybe books aren't as captivating as actually experiencing things, or maybe they're just in short supply.

"Is it different?"

The letters, the language, the existence of menus in general - Seoraj can interpret the inquiry however he likes. Bruce himself is lingering over the menu in what he hopes is a convincingly appropriate pace; he's got a bad (...) habit of reading and processing mass amounts of text in a heartbeat. It can look a little weird if he forgets to pretend to do otherwise.

Books are something he associates with a kind of education that he doesn't have; it's not that he wouldn't be interested so much as it's not something it ever occurs to him to pursue, and so most of the time this is the kind of thing he uses his literacy for, reading signs and menus and keeping records at the forge. (He has names and addresses for some interesting people, written down in a ledger he keeps aside.) "Some of the words mean nothing to me," he admits candidly, glancing up, "but the lettering isn't so different to what I learned." Some of the differences are just handwriting quirks, he thinks.

He nods, as that about makes sense. Not for the first time, he wonders if what he's hearing - English with something uncannily like a Scottish accent - has any kind of similarity beyond the audible ones to Earth's languages. "That alphabet seems to be the standard here," he observes. It's pretty lucky, really; well done universe, at least something manages to tie most things together.

Their tea arrives and Bruce holds his cup between his hands despite the heat, liking the feel of it against his palms, which might border on discomfort for someone without callouses and soreness like he's got. (Someday much sooner than he should, he'll have awful arthritis.) He smiles faintly at their server, and orders a plate that, close as he can figure, has something dead and protein-like in it.

Seoraj's order takes a few minutes - he has a quick back and forth with the server, ruling out dishes that contain substances toxic to humans and comparing and contrasting a few things with what he knows until he settles on a spiced dish that's mostly vegetables and a type of eel he hasn't heard of before. He was previously unaware eels came in types, and very clearly has to resist the impulse to ask about the fishing locally before they're finally left to their own devices with tea to wait.

He's like this with everybody, apparently, consummate people-person; he just doesn't always get attached.

On the subject of the alphabet, though-- "Seems like just luck, knowing something close enough, with all the variety around here." Learning another one altogether, that'd be a damned thing.

It's nice; Bruce likes watching people interact like that more than he likes participating in it himself - and as creepily voyeuristic as that sounds (... is), in this case it has more to do with finding Seoraj interesting. He likes hearing him talk, sue him. (Remember this for the future, it's going to look a lot worse in a few tags.)

"I like it." A quiet remark, about the variety. Language specifically, this time. There's enough around from Earth that he speaks that he can flit through and mix and match and pull a whole host of new things from the library. He did the same thing in Xanadu, when he had the chance. He's got a lot more free time, in Baedal.

"There's something appealing about something that is what it is," he says, maybe a little bit obscurely; he doesn't mean to be, he's just thoughtful sometimes and not so much accustomed to articulating his thoughts (on a subject like this, at least) to anyone else. People tend not to have these conversations with him, and it bothers him less now than it did when he was a little younger, but mostly it means even when the idea is solid, sharing it with someone else is still new and fluid. "Something you learn on its own terms."

"I've always thought language was like mathematics." Well that's... an odd sort of statement to go with his equally reflective tone. But he continues: "Not the romanticism of speaking," obviously, Bruce, "but that it's remembering patterns and which variables to put in those patterns."

He sips his tea.

"People say that math is universal and constant and languages are too big and changing and easy to manipulate, but..." he shrugs a bit. "That's just how you use it."

Seoraj thinks about this for a short while, steam rising from his cup where he's holding it with both hands; eventually he says, feeling out an idea, "Two ways to say something, sound like they mean the same, and don't."

Underlying patterns, meaning, conversations within conversations.

It's skirting some serious issues of laughable denial when Bruce speaks of the easy duplicity of communication when he's up to his neck in it at all times, particularly sitting across the table from someone who - unlike anyone else he's met in Baedal - sees through so many without any effort. Bruce still hasn't sorted out exactly why he's continuing to play along with this; he is rarely prone to morbid curiosity. Then again, he's never prone to taking white collar jobs while picking at fight clubs in nothing but jeans and a t-shirt, so maybe he's just ... blending in.

Unhelpfully: "Homophones."

"I don't know what a one of them is," Seoraj says, unconcerned by his own ignorance on this point, "but I know 'what can I do for you' and 'what would you like from me here' don't tell a person the same thing."

It's better that Seoraj doesn't know what it means; Bruce's utter inability to be funny can go unnoticed. (For now.)

Still, he looks vaguely sheepish about it, both for making a crack about wordplay and making it in the face of Seoraj being otherwise quite apt. It's all right, he doesn't mind looking like that.

"We think we can fool people, all the same."

... Indeed.

"Sometimes we can." Some people don't think about it so much; they don't think about the things they broadcast about themselves in the words they choose in conversation, either. "Other times-" A laugh, here, quiet over his tea; a low sound, like he draws the listener in to hear it. "We think we can do a lot of things, people."

"Sometimes we get away with it, too."

People are capable of anything. Anything. It's both beautiful and terrifying; from the smallest gesture to the broadest atrocity.

... The little things seem more relevant, at the moment. He rubs his thumb over the rim of his cup, refraining from curiously chipping at the edge of the glaze against the clay with his fingernail.

They could be talking about anything.

"Sometimes we don't." The way Seoraj says it, it's like both of these possibilities are just interesting to him; there's no value judgement, no edge, nothing like a warning. It's just an observation, thoughtful-- you learn nothing if you never extend yourself, if you never overextend yourself, if you never let yourself make a mistake.

He's made some fun mistakes over the course of his life, too.

Some men can't afford to make mistakes, no mater how overextended they might be.

(It's rare that Bruce's instincts don't agree with his head.)

For a while it looks like he's going to say something, both in the companionably quiet heartbeats, and the time it takes for him to down some more of his tea. But then their food shows up and whatever hung on an edge there has dissipated by the time the waiter leaves them again, and all he's doing is peering curiously at his plate.

Food diverts Seoraj's attention-- he doesn't peer so much as dive right into, spearing a few things with his fork and tasting, rolling the unfamiliar textures over his tongue and trying, despite knowing the pointlessness, to identify some of the tastes. The spices are alien, but he likes the effect, and he's wondering if the crispness of the cooked vegetables (contrast with tender meat that almost falls apart) is about the method or the plant structure.

The portions are generous enough he'll probably end up taking some of this home with him in a box, which suits him fine. Leftovers are perfectly good, and his own cooking skills are a little more basic. (He does make good bread.)

"That's the one downside of all Baedal's variety," he says, reflectively, after swallowing. "Can't try everything." ...some of it is poisonous to humans.

Leftovers are for other people. (Other people who don't have the kinds of metabolisms that support the insanity of Batman.) Bruce eats with the sort of precision that suggests long-ingrained manners training, even if the finite edges and fiddly details have been worn away. He has a handy ability to inhale food at an alarming rate but not actually appear to be doing any such thing.

"Food allergies are a mundane thing anywhere," is his observation in response as he picks apart something on his plate to inspect the individual components. Some people just don't do well with certain things, no matter how normal they are. Shellfish, processed food... NyQuil.

"Like my sister and cheese," Seoraj observes, popping something in his mouth and adding after he swallows, "mind you, it's the rest of the house as suffers that."

...the man is all class, with his fart jokes at his sister's expense. (He loves her dearly.)

It takes Bruce a second to get that - not because he is so high brow but because he's just bad at expecting conversation to go anywhere whimsical. He's bad at it. So when it does congeal in his head he just gives a lofty look like he is so above that joke.

(He's not. He's plainly trying not to laugh when he takes another pull from his tea.)

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