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bruce wayne

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▶ WHO: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent
▶ DATE: 7-28 (I think?)
▶ WARNINGS: Only if you need warned for excessive snark.
▶ SUMMARY: Superman meets Batman.

Bruce had done a remarkably thorough job of removing himself from either sense of identity he had, between the lack of money, lack of Gotham and having killed.

It was really the last that he couldn't reconcile. The fact that what he had killed was already dead and in defense of someone who was fully alive was... irrelevant to how he viewed the action. He had become the merciless thing that Ra's had tried to turn him into.

By and large he 'handled' that by not handling it at all. By working harder to be a useful presence here. To find supplies, to work on technology and development of what they needed and by making sure that if he left the compound he left alone.

He was just back from one of those excursions when he saw Superman. He was still wearing his body armor, gauntlets, boots even, but he wasn't bothering with the cowl. The cowl was Batman, and Batman didn't kill. He had, therefore -

Yeah, he was a little mentally fucked.

All his reasoning about identity still applied. Most of the people here who knew Batman didn't know him anyway.

He stopped, tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. "Can you be infected by what is happening here? Do you know?"

He was great at small talk. He also had an idea.

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"You aren't the one being taken for rollercoaster rides after dinner, either." He paused and frowned at Superman as a question occurred to him, "Do you even eat?"

He wasn't sure if he was having fun or he wanted to punch this guy's lights out, yet. Time would tell, but for now it was pretty firmly some of both. Wanting to punch him was kind of fun.

Bruce was an odd man.

Now that he'd been a jerk Clark was happy to simply walk besides Bruce, hands on his back.

"I do. I don't have to, not often, but I like the normalcy of it. I'm trying not to eat much in here though, just in case we run our of food for people who actually need it."

The ease with which Bruce transitioned from snarky remarks to conversational should probably be worrying, but since Superman had made a very similar transition he wasn't too fussed.

"We need to think about planting food. Livestock won't work but we should be able to arrange some sort of sustainable project. Scavenging isn't a long term solution." But crops weren't a short term one. "Something has to fuel you. If it isn't food, what is it?"

Clark didn't even notice the transition. He could go from teasing to serious in a second, just like he could get angry enough to trash a man's truck in just a couple seconds. He was an emotional man.

"No offense, but the government is always asking that kind of things from me to find out ways to keep me under their control. So I'd rather not show all my cards right away. Does that make sense?"

"Sure," he agreed, with what might seem a surprising amount of ease. For a moment or two. He even paused to get outside the gates, though he did so by going over the wall again, just for the safety of others inside. "You also just told me that wherever you're from, you're known to the government and they have a problem with you and that whatever you use for energy is something that can be taken away from you."

Just in case Clark had missed that. Not that Bruce was making it a threat, he was just making it Clark that Clark wasn't being opaque. Then again, he clearly didn't intend to be or he would have lied.

"Nope." He grinned as he followed Bruce outside. He didn't even hover this time, actually following the man's steps.

"I told you they are trying to find out if it can be taken away from me. But you're good at reading between the lines."

"That may be what they're figuring out, but you wouldn't worry about it if you didn't believe it was possible." He scanned the landscape and then chose his direction and started moving, more on edge now by a bit bit not really altering his path or lowering his voice to try and skulk. "And thank you, I've made it something of a hobby over the years. I use it to compensate for a lack of sonar."

That? Was a fucking joke. Just a horrible one.

"I bet you'd try to hide yourself on principle too if the government kept a permanent eye on you."

And yet he wasn't denying it. Even if he had been completely invulnerable (and honestly, so far he thought he was unless Kryptonian atmosphere was replicated) it made people worry less about him if they thought they would eventually find something, some way to put a collar around him.

"Also that's the first joke I've heard you crack. Congratulations."

"I left my mask in my trunk," he said, dryly and much in the same tone he'd cracked the joke and had said he was trained by ninjas. "It limits my field of vision. Problem when there are zombies shuffling about looking for brains."

Brains? Well, that was a bit tropey but look who he was talking to.

"That isn't the first joke I've cracked. That's the first joke you've gotten."

"What, you mean I get the special pokerface and snarky edition of you while you joke around with everyone else?"

It was very clear he was teasing, even if he wasn't sure why he was doing it. It was like there were... joking cracks that showed in Bruce and he wanted to see all of them. Bring him out of his shell.

"No," Bruce explained, patiently. "It's just that everyone else is smart enough to know when I'm joking." His look, he deliberately exaggerated to convey (he hoped) that he was joking now.

No one got his sense of humor. It was rare that anyone ever realized he was cracking a joke when he was. Clark was ahead of the game on that, even if Bruce was insulting him in the process.

And just in case, he backed off a teeny, tiny bit.

"Everyone might be a stretch." Of how many people could even tell when he was joking. Which was always snarky. and usually pokerfaced.

Clark looked terribly amused, so it was easy to tell he had indeed taken it as a joke. He wasn't sure what was going on, he didn't usually just click with people like this so he didn't know how to take it. So far he was just rolling with it.

"Yeah, you must be a riot at parties. When you actually deem them worthy of your time." He had to catch himself before he went hovering again as he followed him.

"I am, actually," Bruce said, tone still dry but now picking up a barely there element of pained. "I am very in demand, both because I have money and because I am entertaining and make people feel better about themselves by virtue of being drunk and idiotic."

And sometimes abrasive and almost always embarrassing, but entertaining. "I avoid them as much as I can."

Someday, Clark would figure out how much truth Bruce was telling - maybe - though this one wasn't even attempting to hide in sarcasm. Or, well, the only sarcasm was directed toward those fucking parties and how much he hated every last one of them.

"You get drunk?"

Somehow, that seemed the weirdest thing out of all the man had said. He didn't know Bruce much, but nothing he'd said made Clark think he'd be a drinker. He looked far too much in control for that.

Bruce shot Clark a wry, somewhat amused look. He could and maybe should just answer the damned question, but he almost wanted to just fuck with Clark. Almost.

"What kind of billionaire playboy would I be, if I didn't get drunk?"

Rhetorical.

"I drink."

He didn't get drunk. He gave the appearance of getting drunk while drinking.

Also: "There's movement behind us. Be ready."

Cue Clark looking at him with a completely confused and incredulous face.

"I didn't hear anything. How could you-" And yet, now that he knew what to look for, there it was. He was so used to tunning most sounds out he was out of practice when he actually needed the focus. And the pseudo-Zombies were surprisingly stealthy. "I am ready. You're a box full of surprises aren't you?"

Bruce cracked a grin at the look on Superman's face. "I told you: Ninjas trained me."

Someday, Clark was going to believe that. Okay, probably not. Ninjas was an absolutely ridiculous descriptor. Still.

The grin faded and he looked slightly over his shoulder. "Can you get us high enough to get us out of their range?" He didn't want to kill again. Even if what was coming for them was technically already dead. He'd done it once, pushed to the limit. If he didn't have to do it again....

It would be better.

He hated flying and being carried but. Not today.

Clark didn't wait for Bruce to elaborate, he simply grabbed him under his arms and took off at the safest speed possible. Mostly because he didn't want to give the man a chance to reconsider.

"You're trained by ninjas but you don't know how to deal with these creatures?"

Bruce still hated being swept off his feet (literally) and the lack of control of being flown through the air, but. It was better than the alternative and at least the speed was reduced enough that he thought his stomach contents would stay where they belonged.

"I know how to deal with them just fine," he snapped. "But those creatures used to be people, and evasion is more difficult in the open."

Clark took a second to process that, then he nodded to himself. That was the same reason he'd tried to avoid killing them himself, even when people gave him the weirdest looks. The zombie isn't in a rush to go anywhere so Clark just keeps on holding the man, hoping he'll warn him with enough time if he has to puke again.

"They follow loud noises, I think. If we could find something to make a loud noise elsewhere they might leave us alone."

"If you can manage to hold me in a way that doesn't restrict my ability to reach my belt, I can handle it." Under his arms was well and good but it was taking up some of his reach and making it really uncomfortable for him to reach down and get something open. "Try an arm around my waist. Pretend like we're dancing." Only, you know, backward. Dirty dancing? In the air? The hell ever.

Clark snorted, a pretty undignified sound as he tried to muffle down a fit of laughter. He still did as he was told, if only because he wanted to see what was in that belt of his. Soon he was holding him by his waist with both arms, doing his best not to... squish him, he guessed.

"Are you going to throw ninja weapons at them? Because I want to see that."

At least the guy was clearly demonstrating he had a sense of humor and wasn't just a ball of overpowered snark. Bruce appreciated that more than someone who was a ball of over-trained snark should.

He had to wriggle a bit, made Clark adjust his grip a little, and muttered, "You don't dance much, do you," in a grumpy voice. Then got to the belt, pulled out a little round explosive and flung it away from them and toward the ground.

Where it detonated with a loud bang and cloud of smoke.

"The girl I liked said no to going to prom dance, so not really."

The smoke didn't really bother him so he simply squinted to take a look at the creatures. They didn't seem to be breathing but the smoke bothered them anyway. "Nice trick though, very ninja. Do you have something... loud?"

It wasn't the smoke that was the point so much as the bang, which at least distracted them. Or so Bruce had hoped.

"Loud and sustained." He considered the question and then - "Maybe." He wasn't exactly prone to making loud noises and drawing attention to himself, but with a little bit of work he managed to come up with something.

Which amounted to the parts from a security alarm he hadn't done much with but had intended to. Fishing them out and getting them activated wasn't overly hard, but he stopped short of the throw. "You have better range. You toss it."

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