thedevilsworkisneverdone

Hair trigger temper and violent outbursts. Apathy. Defiance. Completely disrupted sleep that became Alfred's disrupted sleep. Property destruction and sometimes self-destructive, albeit scaled for a child.

If you ever call me Brucie, I'm going to be... upset. [ He hates it, thanks.] It's a way I can distinguish the persona from me, at least loosely, but I hate it. And I'd like to think we're building some kind friendship and solid working relationship.

Reasons to have been there are easy to come up with. Yes, I referred to you as pretty. You're not actually far off my type, known and otherwise, anyway.

Trauma does all kinds of things to us. I don't know if what you do now falls into those loose categories but at least it seems a hell of a lot more focused and useful. At least that's how it is for me.

I would never, thank you very much. That cutesy shit is...not for me. Similarly, only my dad, Stick and my priest ever got to call me Matty, so none of that. Matthew or Matt is fine. I like to think we're well on our way to that.

I drink black coffee with three sugars, by the way. If that were to come up. Real sugar; I can tell that fake shit and it tastes like chemicals to me. See, you've got me at a disadvantage still since we're not in person yet, but I appreciate the compliment all the same.

No one does this without some level of trauma creating the impetus. Even Superman, though his trauma is different.

I drink my coffee black. There's only so far I'll take the facade, though you're going to get called 'sweetheart' a lot. Apologies in advance.

I can be in person by the time you get off work tomorrow.

No, they don't. Everyone that I've met in this whole world has been just different brands of trauma in different packaging. My ex girlfriend the therapist always dropped that Faulkner quote about how the past is never dead, it's not even the past.

Yeah, you seem the type. Sweetheart is fine. I can handle sweetheart. That's usually my default endearment as well.

Alright. I imagine I'll be done reasonably early as long as my client shuts the hell up for once.

Oh, I'm rude. I'll interrupt if I have to. You can decide if you want an impatient call or impatient, large man in expensive shoes in your office.

Faulker seems like a good person to quote at you. “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed.”

I think I'll go with the impatient, large man in good shoes but you have to tell me what the receptionist's expression is when it happens.

I was always partial to "Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools." I think she dropped the other line on me because she picked it up in a shrink book, though, to be fair.

I'll definitely provide a description. It's bound to be something interesting.

I would lose what's left of my sanity trying to date someone with a background in mental health. Or they would.

For what it's worth, my favorite is "Don't bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself."

I'll see you tomorrow - and good luck with the tenants case.

Edited 2025-08-13 17:28 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sure it will be. My love life seems to be a favorite topic in the office so I'm certain the whispers will be good listening.

One of Kirsten's attempts at getting me back to living some semblance of a life. When my ex started wanting to write about the vigilantes in the city and the literal and figurative masks...yeah.

I like that one.

I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. I'm hoping it's a win for the 'little guy.'

What I got in an attempt to get me back into living was 'then wake up and show this city who you are'. Less romantic, but it also came from Alfred so equally fitting.

I'll try to make sure it's a show worth listening in on -- and bring flowers.

I'll tell you the horrible way that I got set up on a date with her. Truly nefarious and underhanded shit was afoot.

I like the scent of lilies and jasmine. For the record.

"Noted" is the sum total of his reply back. Mostly because he has to make arrangements for Gotham coverage tomorrow night and get on top of the lingering business of Wayne Enterprises and make travel arrangements.

He gets to Matt's office a touch early. Tailored suit, but no tie and first few collars of his dress shirt undone. Italian leather shoes, and the jasmine and lily floral arrangement he had custom ordered and picked up on the way. The early is intentional. It gives him a solid reason to be impatient and put on a bit of a show.

He sits, asks periodically if Matt's done yet and when he'll be done and flashes around a thousand watt smile. Tells the story of meeting Matt at the coffee shop and how much he admires his work as a lawyer and how intelligent he must be.

He's mentally flagging slightly in the ten minutes or so it takes before the work day is actually done. It doesn't show but lord that routine is more tiring than any amount of Batman.

Matt smells the flowers first. Lillies, in particular, are strong and cut through the din of all of the other inputs of his senses. Then it's the scent of leather and a good cologne. Purposeful steps that are neither heavy nor light by some measure of comparison. While he half-listens to the conversation happening around him between Kirsten and their current client, his real interest is in what's happening outside the glass of the conference room. Matt puts on a good image of someone paying attention with his hands steepled in front of him but he's already figured out how he wants to play this with the client. The guy just needs to shut the hell up already and let them work.

Finally, Matt rises to his feet and extends his hand, slightly off center, for their client to shake while they say their departing remarks. That's when Kirsten notices someone is waiting for him and the administrative assistant can finally poke her head into the room to announce that Bruce Wayne is waiting for Matt.

Showtime.

Matt picks up his cane and heads out of the conference room with a smooth, easy smile. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting." He makes quick assessments. Ones that maybe he'll tell Bruce about sometime but he picks up a lot in the split seconds of standing across from one another for the first time. Size and build. The way he holds himself as he stands in confidence. It all paints a picture.

Bruce will be interested in seeing what kind of impression Matt gets from him, both because he's just plain curious, and because it will tell him more about how Matt 'works'. He'll also be interested in seeing how, or if, that general perception changes when Bruce isn't playing this role.

He's more loose limbed, 'unconsciously' graceful than he would be in the cowl or even just moving around the Manor.

He sticks to that while he moves to meet Matt half way, and flashes a smile that's just a bit pained. "Maybe a little, but it was worth it." He puts a hand on Matt's shoulder and gives it a squeeze, then pulls back and offers the flowers. "These are for you."

Sometimes there's an extra effort in a movement that he can pick up. It's a stilted hesitation before doing it, like it's something that the person in motion has to think about. He thinks he gets some of that with Bruce because there's an aspect of playing a part here. They're in polite company, with the office administrator nearby and Kirsten lingering in the doorway of the conference room. The glass door would hide nothing anyway but she's never been subtle. Matt decides that the right play here is not to do introductions; in any normal circumstance, he'd want to whisk away a partner from his partner's interrogation long before it happens so doing that is in line with expectations.

Still, he smiles brightly at the flowers that are put into his hands. "They smell wonderful. Thank you." He turns his attention to the administrator and politely asks her to put them in water and on his desk, if it's not too much trouble.

"We should get going. We don't want to be late." A good excuse for a discrete exit is made and he folds his cane to instead hook his arm with Bruce's to allow him to lead the way from the office.

He waits for Matt to handle the flowers and on Matt to lead - or rather provide a lead on handling the exit, and relaxes very, very slightly when it's given to him. Bruce is playing a role, but he's also trying to be at least somewhat considerate of Matt. that means letting him make decisions on introductions, interactions, and most importantly on how they get out.

The hand on his arm is a cue, but he flashes another smile and even waves around Matt to Kirsten in the doorway. "Yes, we'll be late for our reservation." For probably pizza and holding up in Matt's apartment, but that's neither here nor there.

There's still some difference in how he moves when he leads the way out the way he came, but what there isn't is an excessive amount of hesitancy or caution around Matt and 'leading' him. "I think," he says, once out of easy hearing range, "Your receptionist was suitably... surprised at having to deal with my unexpected presence."

All and all, it feels like a successful soft launch of this whole thing to the people in his life. Kirsten will be stalking him at the door tomorrow morning when he comes into the office with a demand for answers that he'll offer in rehearsed stories and faint lies that they've started to establish.

They need a chance to figure out a little more of this before they make a real public entrance but that's what this is for. Feigning physical intimacy is a strangely difficult thing and if they were perfect strangers going into Matt's stupid award ceremony, it'd look stiff and wooden. That doesn't sell papers and tabloid stories.

So far, it feels fairly natural, all told. Bruce is bigger than him by a considerable margin so he knows what he meant now about how their styles would be different. "Yeah, I heard her heartbeat get fast. Especially when you kept doing a time check to figure out when I would be done," he faintly smiles. "My place is a couple blocks away. Do rich people walk anywhere or do they just take limos?"

"Most of the 'elite' refuse to be on the street out of the misguided idea that they'll be robbed. Fortunately, I've managed to maintain my 'odd' habit of going in public without a guard. Though if we do this again, I'll be changing clothes."

To avoid attention - he means into jeans and boots, not into Batman. Not his city and that would be beyond wrong, even if it wouldn't be too obvious a connection to allow.
n
He's actually pretty okay with physical contact and casual intimacy - within this role and act and mindset. His response will be different (one way or another) in private. "But you'll need to lead the way to the apartment - and find a number for pizza delivery once we're there."

"No one looks twice at a suit and tie in this part of the city. Once we get down to the ground level of the building, you'll see a lot of it on this side of town," Matt explains with a shrug. His suit, a dark grey knit special right off the rack from a Nordstrom sale section, won't spark a look but he can't tell how fancy Bruce is, except that the fabric feels expensive under his fingers while they walk.

Matt has never had to maintain a public image where those things matter or anyone but a small sub-circle of friends actually care about who he's dating or what he's doing.

"I'll make it look like you're leading," he says with a grin.

Once they exit the building, Matt gives Bruce's arm a soft squeeze and a tug to the right to indicate which way to go. "And don't worry about pizza. I have menus in the 'junk' drawer by the refrigerator." He can feel the raised text that comes with the heavy ink printing that is used on those cheap pamphlets but he doesn't mention that part.

The suit's expensive. Most of what he wears is. Even the jeans and hoodie he'll change into, to go out again at some later point were 'nice' - they're just old as hell and beat half to death.

Bruce veers right when tugged, and looks up the street to see the direction they're going. "This is an area I'd choose if I wanted to pull off high profitable small scale crime," he admits. "But I don't think most would."

He'll figure out what to order - and how Matt uses a menu, maybe - when they get to the apartment. "I already have a room at a fairly expensive hotel. I'll make my exit some time before dawn. The public one, anyway. If I need to change before then I'll be more discrete in my exit and return."

"I think that's a way of saying the neighborhood is gentrified to hell, in which case I would agree with you," he says with a short laugh.

He picks up on a few double-takes. Probably not as many as they might get in Gotham but it's not as if Bruce Wayne is an entirely unknown quantity, especially for those with an interest in the gossip pages based on Matt's online searching. Good. This is already doing some of the work. Little hints dropped out in the world and breadcrumbs that a gullible press will follow.

"I might be the one who has to make a dramatic exit at some point," he answers. He has the intentions of staying in while they work on their cover story but he hears things and it's hard to ignore the world outside his window and beyond his rooftop sometimes. "I trust you to be discrete. I'm on the top floor--obviously. If that helps one way or another now or in the future."

"I'm glad to know my impressions aren't off base."

Bruce is noticing the occasional look, but there is no, even subconscious reaction to it. Not so much as a change in his heart rate or muscle tension.

"Top floor will help with discrete, both now and in the future. More in the future. I'm also prepared to be 'abandoned' if the need rises. If something comes up for me, I should be able to handle it without leaving. If I can't, you may get Superman in your living room. Fortunately, he's learned to open windows in the last decade or so." that one's fond.

They have a lot to talk about. Some of it things that haven't come up at all and have little to do with crime fighting.

"When I was growing up, this neighborhood was all of the rough Kitchen Irish families who'd been here since they got off the boat back when they were told they 'need not apply' and carved out a place. Then aliens came down and half of the neighborhood got wrecked and the developers came in to 'fix' it. Which meant rebuilding apartments without rent control no one could afford and trying to remind everyone we're supposed to call it Clinton or Midtown West," he answers before offering a faint, almost self conscious smile. That's not an unrehearsed rant, to say the least.

He notices Bruce's calm and keeps his own reaction steady. He's good at that because he's not supposed to know these things around him so he's well trained in a placid expression.

"I figured you, of all people, would understand that my schedule is sometimes filled last minute. And I do have a balcony so that might make things a little easier for him if he does." But Matt hopes there isn't an emergency on either of their parts. Outside of the constant fleeting hope that maybe the world will be quiet for a while, they have a lot to figure out. He gives Bruce's arm a soft squeeze again with a draw to a left turn. "We go three blocks down this way and it's the building on the right at the end of the block. Can't miss it."

"I've always lived outside Gotham, among the sprawling estates owned by the same families for generations. They're very much Ivory Towers by design. Even my father couldn't stand that part, even while he couldn't quite bring himself to live anywhere else."

There's no change in his pace or the cadence of it, but once he's sure of where he's going the motion itself becomes more... fluid. What he thinks, but does not say, is that he understands last minute interruptions, but also that sometimes you're just so damn tired that they ... hit harder than others. Even if they're not interrupting anything important and the tired is mostly not physical.

"I think my mother hated it more."

Or maybe that's just him.

"A golden cage is still a cage, so I'm told," he answers with a faint shrug of his shoulders. A sprawling estate on its surface sounds lovely but it doesn't feel like Bruce thinks so. Not from his tone or the way he speaks of it.

Playing that part seems like it would be just as exhausting as the one that Matt himself performs every day. Illusions and deceptions for what is expected.

"Is it strange to say that I love Hell's Kitchen? I still do. Despite everything. There's never anywhere that's going to feel like home. That's why it's important to do what I can to help." On the surface, he could just as easily be speaking of his work as a lawyer. Helping around the neighborhood and lending assistance to the people he grew up around. They both know what it really means. Even if he stops sometimes because he gets broken down, bone deep tired from what it takes and what it has cost him, he comes back to the Kitchen. Every single time.

He keeps his head forward while they walk. "Directly behind you, maybe forty feet, someone snapped your picture. Quick gait, trying to keep up and still keep distance." He could hear the click of the lens.

So far, so good.

"It was meant to be social commentary on the wealthy, not personal complaint," Bruce says, with a faint smile that warms his voice just a touch. "Much of the Manor is very... public space, and my attachment to it is more as a legacy than a home, but that would be true no matter what sort of place it was."

Probably. He is very attached to the City. Gotham is his. Wayne Manor is something he is the inheritor and...caretaker of, in a sense. His father and mother's that he happens to live in.

"It's very similar to my relationship with the family fortune, actually." Similar sort of thing. Use it well, keep the companies and businesses intact, grow them where he can, but they don't feel like this. "It is no more strange to love Hell's Kitchen than it is to live Gotham. It might even be less strange, since you live there." He has no problem with any of that being overheard, if it is, though.

"Thank you. Hopefully someone will appear in front of us so they get a picture that's not largely composed of my ass - however good it looks in these pants."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Do you want to move this to action/meeting?

I would love that. Feel free to just keep the thread going if you don't want to make a new one

DONE

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject