by the time you hear this i will have already spiralled up

[caballero]

Who: Bruce Wayne ~Tom~ and your character.
What: Daily life, some mundane, some not.
Where: Various places about the city.
When: Presently, though days vary.
Notes: This is kind of a pseudo-narrative whose primary purpose is background noise for what Bruce has been up to, but I decided I also wanted CR, so I'm leaving it open. >_> I think the easiest places to run into him would be around town (he's usually in Bonetown, when he's visible) or at the Vault, though if you have an idea for a specific scene please ping me. I WANT ALL THE THINGS.
Warnings: Mentions of violence, sexuality, assault.

Work at the power plant is profitable, but not particularly stimulating; he's far more interested in the government contracts and the way the wind power mill plays a role around the powers that be. He drifts through halls that he has clearance for, trades wires and bits of metal and runs electricity through strange alien glass. At night he goes home with great books filled with half-lost languages that tell only scattered tales of the city's conception and ends up with more questions than answers - but the questions, at least, progress.

He takes yet another alias (merely Tom pretending, merely, merely..) and signs up with men with haunted and vicious eyes who beat each other half to death one night away, bare-knuckled, desperate - the clientele is half burn-out half ex-con, and on the sidewalks as dawn creeps in, they hold ice packs to their faces and tell him stories, grinning viciously and spitting blood. He doesn't look like it, but he takes notes.

The Vault is ... he say nice, when asked, sometimes interesting, and maybe it is - maybe it would be more, if he did anything there that he was supposed to. He pays the cover charge and watches his friend, sometimes he walks her (or one of the waitresses) home. The day after he knocks out a particularly aggressive patron, his cover gets comped. He starts signing himself into the red rooms the visit after. Somehow, it's easier than warming up to the girl with short ice-blue cropped hair and dark skin that flirts with his peripheral vision and pretends to pretend not to notice his attention.

At three in the morning in Gidd, he sits on a rooftop and watches members of the Militia beat a man into a coma, the both of them wholly helpless, he on his distant perch and that man soft-boned and innocent below. He doesn't make a decision that night - he already had - but he does make a schedule.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

In Baedal - especially with someone she remembers from the Vault - she doesn't make any assumptions in either direction. Maybe he doesn't react because it doesn't bother him; she's tired of being treated as though existing is something she does expressly to disturb other people. As though she's inherently a provocation.

(Ignorance is more likely, even in Baedal, but-- it'd be nice not to be looked at that way, and there's no one around to care if she pretends.)

"That's why I was there." In the Ctenophora, specifically, and she means because she's got a friend there and not because she's inclined to creep on Bruce; she'd probably have investigated the Vault sooner or later either way, but Hasi's presence tipped it.

[caballero]

It doesn't bother him. She is what she is, and he's not been squeamish about bodies since the first time he had to stitch up a stranger. (Shouldn't he have lost those nerves with something more intimate? Oh well.) It's just easier to pretend otherwise; it's how most people are.

"I'm Tom." And he's still just standing there, casual, arms leaning on the railing like this is totally normal. "Sorry about the disturbance."

... With that dude being chucked into the river for some mysterious reason, and all.

[rhinemaid]

There's a slight pause as she connects his face ('that guy who had his hands on Hasi') to his name ('the guy who I'm supposed to ask about golf') and if he's really observant he might even see the moment where she pauses, like, really?

"Golf is really competitive, huh."

[caballero]

Hasibe. Striking from the distance. Of course.

"It is."

Extremely seriously.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde weighs this for some time, considering him while she swims in circles on her back, like this is just a normal part of her evening routine. (Maybe it is-- consider how she met Réjean.)

Finally, "At least it's not bloody polo. It's impossible not to look like a twat playing polo."

[caballero]

His smile is brief and a little unusual; not quite an afterthought, but something that goes against his default programming. He seems very mild, this one.

"I like horses," and agreement is in his voice, "But I've never gotten polo."

[rhinemaid]

"I used to ride, at home." Her expression doesn't change, but there's a barely-there wistfulness in her voice; she misses it, permits herself to miss this one thing and doesn't allow herself anything like homesickness. There may not be a home to go back to any more, and pretending that she ever will is only going to hurt her. There are more interesting ways she can dig her nails into her own wounds than that.

[caballero]

"Have you done any riding here?"

He has, a bit. He's looking at horses; and there's no homesickness about that. Not his real home. (Seriously, imagine anyone riding around on a horse in Gotham ... and not getting hit in the face with a taser, Crane.)

It might occur to someone else to find this odd. Bruce neglects to.

[rhinemaid]

"Not yet." There are certain pastimes she associates firmly with 'before' and not 'after'; things that it simply hasn't occurred to her to pursue now, because they're part of someone she's afraid she can't be any more. She's edged towards some of them, lately (Hasi is a walking reassurance that she isn't irreparably unrecognizable--), but not that. She remembers her first time on a horse, sat up in front of her father, her stepfather watching anxiously from nearby, how she hadn't understood what the smell or Emery's too-loud laugh meant or why Francois wasn't so sure it was a good idea.

(Nothing had gone wrong; it was years before she had to contextualize those details.)

"Have you?"

[caballero]

Someday he'll look back and wish that he wondered more about people - genuinely wondered. Versus just noting things. Not today.

"Yes." A duo of friends is walking across the bridge now, laughing together, and they nod hello as they pass; Bruce returns it. They either don't notice Ilde or don't think it's strange enough to remark on.

Back to the lady in the water: "It's a nice break from cars."

(A part of him is despairing without his Lamborghini, though.)

[rhinemaid]

"I can't drive, anyway." She'd been sixteen when Prometheus got their hands on her, and had never needed to know how to drive; the independence aspect of it hadn't cemented as a temptation, not yet, not when she liked to sit in the passenger seat and watch the driver. She'd known so many people who did love to drive that it had felt like some kind of intimacy, like being included in something that made someone else happy, and she'd been spoiled enough not to have to see it any other way. "I like the cabs here better than the train, too."

Horse-drawn and not reliant on the CiD, not openly monitoring her travel habits; she can be charmed and paranoid at the same time if she wants.

[caballero]

"Trains aren't so reliable." Especially high rail ones. He's been on one that crashed, it sucked.

(Ha, ha.)

"Horses are hard to keep, though." Even here. He still wants one. (Ponies.) Apartment living is not meant for them, though.

[rhinemaid]

"We had the space, on the estate at home." She almost misses Florence more the longer she spends in Baedal, or at least in a different way to the way she'd missed it before; it doesn't feel so unreal or far away, now, and in some ways she wishes it did.

[caballero]

"Farmland is better than estates for that."

He sounds very sure of his assertion - but then, in Bruce's opinions, most wide open spaces are better than estate ones for just about any purpose beyond ultra-paranoid privacy and dedication to hermitism.

[rhinemaid]

"I haven't spent a lot of time on farmland." After a moment, she reconsiders, then amends, "I haven't spent a lot of time on a farm that's...farming." There's a gesture here; the last time she was in a barn, she was watching someone be tortured for information.

[caballero]

"It's a lot of broad spaces." Good for being isolated; it's nice for riding. Even when it's not hospitable - he has memories of plateaus and rocky inclines, salt flats and stone-filled fields.

"Quiet."

[rhinemaid]

"I like quiet." She had an unerring ability to find quiet in the loudest places; she didn't need much to be satisfied, most of the time. (Ilde described herself as easily pleased, which wasn't precisely accurate but close enough for government work.) "Places that have a purpose."

Something about that just inherently appeals; having reasons.

[caballero]

"You should go out sometime." Why? Why not. It seems like something Tom might say. Bruce is inherently interested in Ilde because she's working with Hasi, in one way or another, but it's in a wholly different way to the social interest Tom might (should?) have.

"If you ever catch me out, remind me to give you some recommendations. I suspect I owe you for the surprise."

... Of hurling some guy on her, yes.

[rhinemaid]

"Well," very reasonably, she seems to think, "do you have any recommendations for where 'out' I should go?"

Ilde has been busy in Baedal - extraordinarily - but she hasn't had a reason, yet, to go as far south as the farming communities. Her encounters with Baedal's horse population have mostly involved paying a cab-driver or watching them go by while she's walking, which isn't a bad thing, really; she's fond of public transport traffic on the ground.

[caballero]

In response to that, he seems to consider for a moment, then just - points. South.

... Out there, apparently.