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

[mightyfallen]

Jack isn't up at this hour on purpose, not lately. His party days may not be far behind him, but they are behind him, or at least swept under the run with the rest of his vices. He has morning meetings, places to be and things to do in far too few hours to be awake right now. Too bad that's not in the cards tonight.

If it's the Militia's rounds that wake him, it isn't until they're near finished, and he isn't thinking clearly enough to be aware of it, not consciously. He simply finds himself sitting up in bed, awake, alert, every nerve in his body on edge – and he tells himself it's nothing, because it's always nothing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, hold the breath in his lungs until it burns just to remind himself how to feel, and he's up. He checks the locks, then the windows, just– just because. He doesn't analyze it; he does it, and when that doesn't settle him, he grabs a bottle and a cigarette and heads to the terrace.

A squeaky hinge harbingers his arrival, followed by a quick flash of the match, then the slow glow of his cigarette as he takes a drag before stepping out away from the door. It's fucking freezing out here, by the way. (...Granted, it would help if he'd remembered to put on a shirt.)

[caballero]

Before Jack even opens the terrace door, Bruce knows he's there - he doesn't make a habit of trespassing, he's just on his way out, so of course the timing would work like this.

'Like this' meaning just as he lands silently in a crouch, balanced precariously on the roof's edge, currently neatly obscured in shadows but in very real danger of either having to immediately reveal himself or sit in a very dangerous position for as long as it takes Jack to go away.

- Of course that whole train of thought happens in a split second, and in that same split second, he decides that sounds like a terrible idea, and if he's going to get busted he wants to get busted without a leg cramp. So he just. Hops down onto the actual balcony. It's clear from how he moves that it's in the course of stalling himself from having leapt from somewhere alarming.

[mightyfallen]

What the– It's lucky for both of them Jack isn't armed with anything more dangerous than a bottle of whiskey that he is really not inclined to waste, as his first instinct is defensive. He doesn't just jump, he jumps and steps back against the wall, taking the bottle by the neck and raising it up level with his head before he so much as pauses to think.

And then he does pause. And think. Which does not actually clarify much.

"How did you even--" He's looking to the roof, then to Bruce. Dude, what.

[caballero]

"I was aiming for the next one," he says, hands going up immediately in a 'cease fire' pose - his body language isn't threatening, nor is his voice, but, well. It's still weird. "Sorry."

... And wait, he was aiming for the next building? Sure, buddy. Bruce glances at Jack, his makeshift weapon, and back to Jack.

"Jack Benjamin?" (Surely it's comforting to know a constituent is a crazy person.)