thomas brandon iii ; batman (bystealth) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-04-12 10:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, lois lane |
Who: Thomas and Max
What: Conversation, mostly.
Where: One of the Bat's hideouts.
When: The night before the article is published.
Warnings: None; cut before things got warning-worthy.
Max was tense.
It was late, two in the morning and she’d actually gotten to put Amanda to sleep herself before going to check on the publication status of the morning edition. She had no articles running, but she wasn’t checking on one of her own. She was checking on Job’s article, and she’d managed to catch an earful of the Chief yelling at the press operators and threatening them within an inch of their lives if they so much as breathed word of the story before it hit newsstands. She’d checked on the photos that were running alongside the story, too, and she had to admit the high-gloss shot for the cover was gorgeous, impressive, fucking breathtaking. The Bat looked larger than life, and It reminded her of all the nights she chased the same kind of picture when she moved to Seattle. And that’s what made this all so hard to work through. The article was good, the pictures were good, the fucking message was good.
She’d leaked the images of the cells beneath the bank, as promised, and she had the originals tucked in the bag she carried on her back. She was dressed in black, and she made one last (unplanned) stop between the paper and the warehouse, where she intended to stash the originals for safekeeping. Despite her cockiness on the comms, the full clips were more telling than she wanted to admit.
The roof across from the bank was high, the vantage point a good one, and she pulled night binoculars from her bag and watched a few minutes. The National Security Council was good, she knew from experience, and the Masks wouldn’t be getting back into that bank again, not without invitation. She dropped when the laser sweep of the surrounding buildings passed overhead, and she was off before they could start their visual sweep.
She didn’t bother with the truck to get to the Bat’s warehouse from the location. She’d gotten a pretty good feel for the roofs of the city with Nightwing, and the night air and exertion helped calm her nerves, the way a good workout always did. The warehouse came into sight, and she wondered how far the Bat’s perimeter extended, with idle pride in him, as she neared.
Only a mask would come by way of the rooftops, proper tactical approach by ground or building as dictated by regulation being something a SWAT team or other military entity would follow, and the Bat’s security there was largely surveillance and not focused on countermeasures. He saw her coming, but he only spared her a glance when he saw her on approach, busy with so many other screens and data feeds.
Contrary to all logic, the Bat was not tense. He had been planning for this eventuality for a very long, long time. As soon as he made the decision to make his money a public company on this side, in fact. There were legal and financial failsafes for most eventualities that the Bat had been able to predict, as both Luke and Max had seen when they found the ones he’d put together for them. Now, it was just a matter of waiting.
He had the door open for her by the time she was within sight of the warehouse itself, a dark silhouette among darker shadows revealed by the swinging metal door.
She hadn’t actually expected him to be there, and her step slowed for a few paces as she neared, her gaze dragging over him slowly, before she sped up again. She slipped the bag from her shoulder when she got close, and she pressed it against his chest as she passed him, close enough for her hip to brush against his thigh. “I didn’t think you’d be here,” she admitted, looking over her shoulder as she moved out of reach and into the warehouse. “The clips are in there.”
He followed her through the familiar twists of the facade, constructed boxes fit together to cleverly reproduce stacks, and, abrupt, the warehouse opened up into empty space and severe equipment. He had been working at the open console, evidenced by the chair pushed away and the flickering screens. One of them showed Amanda asleep, and smaller screens showed the exterior of the room and her heartbeat as it blipped across the pixels. A strangely human coffee mug was sitting at the edge of the desk, long cold. “Story planted?” he asked, curious.
She nodded, even as she leaned her hands on the console and watched the monitor, a soft smile taking over her features. “She’s less of a terror like that,” she said, reaching for the coffee with curious fingers to see just how cold it was, her hand closing around the chilled exterior before she looked back at him. “She’s laughing now. Wakes me with it every morning,” she told him, turning to face him and leaning back against the edge of the desk, weight braced on her arms behind her. “Worried?” she asked, looking at his face to try to read something in his features, in his eyes, to see how he felt about all of this.
Thomas only got to hear laughter rarely; he visited in the early evening rather than early morning, before he went out rather than after. He looked at the screen, the emotion and longing entirely erased by the Bat’s profile. He swept silently behind her to resume his place in the chair, absently adding, as she reached for the cup, “Don’t drink that...” He tapped once, twice, at a screen, and it scrolled anew. “Waiting; I’ve compensated for everything I’ve thought to worry about.”
She glanced at the mug when he issued the order, and then she slid up onto the desk entirely when he took his place in the chair. “Something in it, Brandon?” she asked, crossing a knee over her thigh and leaning forward to rest a long-fingered hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” she told him, voice reassuringly soft, thumb brushing against the side of his neck. “She’ll be safe, and Luke will, too. We’ll get through it.”
His face was spare but clean and visible, the dark armor so thick and broad in contrast that it looked like overkill, a knight’s armor of old, only without the clanking or the shine. He took a breath and let it out so slow and quiet that it was not audible. Distracted, he looked away from the screens into her face. “No guarantees of that,” he said, doubtfully.
She wasn’t accustomed to the contrast of smooth skin with the suit, and her thumb brushed back and forth against his neck a moment before her hand skimmed up to his jaw. She didn’t look away, and her fingers didn’t shake, and she shook her head. “No, no guarantees. But whatever happens, we’ll deal with it together, and we’ll make it,” she said, the conviction in her voice undeniable, even though she didn’t speak up and didn’t curse. “We make you weaker,” she admitted, because she knew it was true, knew the worry wasn’t for himself. “Let us make you stronger, too.”
The tight worry in his face eased slightly. “You do, in a way. There was a time when I would have aggressively worked to professionally discredit Arakkis before it got to this point.” He reached out, touched a screen, and pulled up the dossier he had created for Arakkis. It included a makeshift psychological profile and the Bat’s assessment of his belongings and personal habits. There were few statements for his history, as Arakkis was brand new to Humanity, and it definitely showed.
She glanced at the screen, sliding over on the desk so she could better see it. “His story is a good one,” she said honestly. “He wants people to stand up and make a change. He wants people to understand that you’re just a man, and that there isn’t any reason why they can’t do the things you do,” she said, pride in him (and the idea) in her voice. “It’s a good article, even if I hate the fuck out of it,” she said, looking back at him. “The difference is that truth at the cost of good people’s lives, it’s not truth worth telling. He didn’t care about that part.” She uncrossed her knees and placed one of her feet between his thighs on the chair, and she nudged (though it didn’t move him at all). “Hey, look at me.”
He looked. The calm was only on the surface. “The whole purpose of the Bat is that he is not just a man. A man is a target. Do you understand how mortal this makes me, Max? We will be fortunate if the worst that happens is legal and financial ruin.” He made a sharp little gesture with the back of his hand, as if that took it all in.
When he looked back at her, she stared back amount, the conflict in his gray eyes almost tangible. “I didn’t before, not at first.” She admitted. “I came here, and I thought if everyone understood then they’d change, be better, be more like you.” She leaned forward, both her hands on the arms of his chair and too close for him to ignore. “The money doesn’t matter, and the law won’t find anything; you’re too smart for that. And we aren’t casuals walking around without any defense. We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.” She smiled a sad smile. “Because I said you have to be, and I can kick your ass if you aren’t.”
As always, Thomas was very careful about hurting anyone near him, so he couldn’t make another sharp gesture again, but he did lean forward to meet her stare. He did not smile. “The money is important,” he said, fiercely. “Not in the way they think, but it’s important. It needs to keep doing what it’s doing.”
“What is that?” she asked, not backing down. In fact, she scooted closer to the edge of the desk, and she moved her hands further up the arms of his chair. “The company? Or the work? Because, Brandon, I know you. I might not know how many warehouses and safehouses you have strewn around this city, but I know you have them. And I know you have money to keep doing what you’re doing somewhere.” She did know, too, and she didn’t doubt it, not for a minute. “You can’t stop, and that means you’ve got a million fucking things in place to ensure you don’t have to.”
He didn’t like what she said about him not being able to stop, because it was true, and he hadn’t known that she was so keenly aware of it. He turned his chin sharply, deprived of hand movement. “No. The money, the Brandon money, it needs to be public, it needs to work for the public. It needs to keep doing what it’s doing.”
She waited a moment, and then she touched his cheek lightly with calloused finger tip, trying to get him to look back. “Why?” she asked quietly, so quietly it almost wasn’t a sound.
He didn’t want to meet her eyes. It wasn’t a conversation he was proud to have. “Because before, it did more harm than good.”
He might not have looked back at her, but she didn’t need him to, not to get an idea of what he meant, of what he was feeling. “You have always been a good man, Thomas Brandon,” she said with a sort of quiet certainty. She didn’t want to think too hard on if this meant his parents - the parents he so loved - had been involved in something he could potentially hate them for.
“That,” Thomas said, rather darkly, “is a matter of opinion.” His eyes came up now, and he was very serious. “I understand the morality of my decisions. Others do not. But it is necessary.”
“Thomas, Inc. is a public company. It’ll keep doing what it’s doing, and you’ll keep doing what you’re doing,” she said, because she didn’t have any illusions this would keep him out of the suit. Her voice was firm and strong, and her opinion just as solid. “Whatever you need to do, we’ll help you do,” she said, putting a little more pressure on his cheek. “This is who you are, Brandon, and it’s the person your family loves, and we might not understand everything, but that doesn’t change anything.”
Some of the hardness seemed to melt, and he gave her a truly perplexed look. “I do not understand you, sometimes,” he said, mustering some honesty to the best of his ability. “It would be better for you to cut ties.”
“Why would it be better, Brandon?” she asked, a real, soft smile passing over her features enough to touch her eyes.
“Then,” he said, logically, “anything that happened to me would not directly affect you.”
“Would you cut ties with me, if I was in trouble?” she asked, smiling a little at the logic, fingers sliding from his face to his shoulder and cold kevlar and suit.
“...No,” he admitted, finally realizing that she was sitting very close, above eye-level, and the prolonged contact was not normal.
“Then why would I cut ties with you?” she asked, fingers casually sliding along his pectoral and then beneath his arm, where she knew perfectly well the clasps were. She had to lean forward more to get to them, knee in his lap and the thin tank top she wore riding up past her navel and slipping enough to show she wore nothing beneath it.
“Everyone else did,” he said, speaking of a time before now, quite obviously, or perhaps even longer ago than it really sounded. “Or... I did. Before.” He reached out, and, feeling rather odd touching her with gauntlets and not fingers, picked her up by the waist and slid her off the desk and onto his lap. He lifted his eyes uncertainly to see what she made of it.
“I’m not everyone else,” she said, more fondness in the fact that he didn’t realize none of the people he cared about would ever leave him than any kind of vanity. When he said he’d left, that surprised her, but then those gauntlets were closing around her waist, and the surprise in her eyes was genuine - she didn’t bother to hide it. She dropped her gaze to the stays at his side, and she undid the entire row of them before looking up at his face. “Why did you?” she asked, meaning before, and not this. She just shifted, straddling his thighs and pressing against him in invitation, instead.
“So that I wouldn’t have to have this conversation with anyone.” Once she was settled, he turned over his wrist between them and pulled open the small half-buckles, half-clasps that kept them tight. After that they slid off, leaving a layer of tape to support his knuckles. He didn’t like just dropping them (he usually put them away in the cabinet not far from where they sat) so he reached around her and put them, one by one, on the desk surface. “I am not good at conversation, anyway. It never went well.” Now bare fingertips reached up, and Thomas remembered recent advice, so he touched her cheek.
She looked over her shoulder as he put the gauntlets on the desk, and then she looked back at layer of tape on his knuckles. She followed the progress of that tape as he touched her cheek, and the touch surprised her enough that it took a second before she rubbed her skin against the touch. “Is it so bad, the conversation?” she asked, empowered by his fingers and the fact that she was where she was. She slid her hand under the loosened suit, hand skating over fabric-covered muscles and looking for the feel of strength and tension under her fingers; she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t relaxed, even if he appeared calm.
“My conversation is,” Thomas said, baldly. “People like to talk about things I don’t find it necessary to talk about.” The armor was more complex than Arrow’s, and it fit in almost plate-like fashion to the flexible, wire-ridden suit beneath. It looked almost like a surfer’s wetsuit, but with tiny matte white threads. The kevlar went over it all, and it weighed so much that he didn’t seem at all small when he managed to maneuver out of the torso piece without displacing her. He didn’t want to let her go, but he was going to have to move. He stopped moving as the indecision temporarily stopped the rest of the proceedings.
She watched the torso piece come off with interest. She’d never watched that before, not when he wasn’t bleeding and hallucinating, and the raw power of it was enough to draw her attention and hold it, as if there was nothing in the world but that. When he stopped, she grinned, and she leaned up against against him and kissed his chin, more a press of lips, mouthing, than a kiss. There was no hesitation in it, no uncertainty, and she pressed the same kiss to his lips before slipping back onto the desk with one foot on the arm of his chair, waiting.
Thomas was reassured by the kiss. It meant she didn’t think of the suit as especially distasteful, and she wasn’t annoyed by his lack of poetry. As long as she didn’t ask him about his feelings for her, he thought he might actually be able to get through the next few minutes without making a mistake. He smiled slightly and stood up, touching her cheek again--at just the same spot--and then reaching for the gauntlets. He glanced at Amanda’s screens, but of course they were set to audibly alert him with any problems. He leaned back and kissed her the way she had just kissed him, contact and a press of cool lips to hers. “...Do you want to help me take the rest off?” he asked.