Who: Jason and Bruce When: 8/6 Where: Jason's safehouse, Park Row, Gotham What: Bruce has news. Too bad Jason's somehow managed to already hear it. Rating: Low except for swearing
Gotham in August was pure misery. The heat and humidity piled up in the narrow streets and alleys, made going out oppressive, much less dealing with people. Crime always took a spike in the summer out of sheer irritation. Even punching people didn't really make it better, not when he was sweltering in the helmet and Kevlar, even when he was on the bike, covering more territory on his usual patrols the way Dick had requested.
And if he had conflicted feelings on doing something Dick suggested and working a little closer with the rest of the bats of Gotham, even if it was a good idea to share intel, he could take it all out on the idiots who mugged, scammed, dealt, and outright assaulted each other and the idiot tourists who wandered into places they should have the sense to stay away from.
By the end of the night, he was no less conflicted, and added the usual lump of aches and bruises and raw skin to the sweat and the heat and the stifling air under his helmet, and more than ready to crash. His current safehouse was on Park Row - Crime Alley. Not all that far from where he'd grown up, actually, and the place hadn't improved in twenty-five years. The bike got stashed behind a false wall under a staircase (eat your heart out, Harry Potter), and he headed up the decrepit stairs, mind on the trickle of tepid water the shower coughed out - the single room billed optimistically as an efficiency didn't go for frills like regularly working hot water, but under the circumstances, he'd take it. He didn't even have furniture beyond a couch, a chest for his gear, and strategically placed crates, but it was all his, down to the takeout boxes in the fridge (well, except for the roaches and rats that stuck their nose out of the walls, but if the place didn't run to solid construction, it also didn't have residents that flinched over a little thing like gunshots). The privacy felt better than all the hot water and King beds in the world.