[closed] you call me weak but still your secrets i will keep

[pixieboots]

Date & Time: January 3rd
Location: TOWN OUTSKIRTS
Characters: a Bat and a Robin
Summary: Bruce is investigating a thing, Dick is trying his hardest to investigate him.
Warnings: probably none!



[ An hour outside is really all it takes; an hour in and already the cold is settling in a way that steals his breath when the wind turns against him. It's the kind of cold that makes him want to stop and hug his bare knees, the kind his instincts say will wear his reflexes down as long as he's in this outfit, no matter how okay he is now at keeping his heart rate up for the bodyheat when he needs to.

And Bruce would tell him to suck it up, if he could see him shivering up here now. No matter what Batman would tell him he can go home if he’s chilly, that there’s work to be done. He knows it in his heart, he’s sure he knows it better than anyone that just because Batman isn’t talking doesn’t mean he isn’t watching.

Maybe that was the problem before. Looking the part isn’t all there is to being Robin, but without an insulated suit it’s harder here to keep working at the same pace. With a secret to keep from two new roommates, with no way around the awful fear of exposure he can’t keep working the same way. Not as often as Robin should.

But he has a little time left, before he has to turn back. He can’t give up.

Not yet he can’t. ]

Comments

[inflorence]

( Bruce had been taking stock of the people who lived here, in the way that any outsider tries to learn and adapt to their customs. December had been primarily devoted to that cause; by January, he'd slid into a more comfortable, taciturn, fringes role.

What he kept not knowing to do was how to handle the little add on that flung himself over rooftops and believed in a man and a relationship that Bruce had no idea how to maintain.

And it was preoccupying, even if he didn't want it to be. Bruce wasn't Batman -- he wasn't even Bruce, except for what the handful of people here chose to call him. He hadn't even introduced himself as an anybody to the rest, and he didn't plan on starting. All of this was a sort of bizarre haze to move through until his life would start up again, which meant dealing with it, and not being dragged down.

Only now he wasn't sure what that meant either, as he observed the giant pawprints of the dog he'd run into causing a degree of havoc around town. Worse, the bone he'd gotten the pony sized mutt to drop, with the teeth marks and brittleness of a bone burned but not yet broken.

A human femur. Difficult to tell male or female, without a pelvis or any equipment to give him further insight, but definitely... human.

Bruce stared back down the road and sighed into his scarf. The biting chill of the wind made all of this worse, and the fact he wasn't going to sit back and ignore a dog who'd dragged a femur into town.

Not as planned. Dangerous, and...

He looked upward, toward the rooftops.

Liable to bring him down. )

Notice anything odd about this?

( He asks the empty air, or so it seems, crouched down next to the femur he'd used his cane to pull out of the crusted, icy snow to the more compacted snow of the street. )

[pixieboots]

[ Whether he'd registered it before or not, the cane strikes him all at once when he finally catches sight of Bruce. It's different and strange, but then it's not as if his Bruce doesn't come with plenty of his own disguises. He's being let in on the secret, whatever that secret might be. That's what matters now.

A noiseless hop and he's crouching by Bruce, reaching out a gloved finger to touch the edge of the bone. ]

Yeah. It's human. [ It's obvious, so obvious that can't be it, there has to something else there only Bruce can see.

It's a real mystery. A mystery Bruce wants him to help solve.

He tugs his cape over his bare knees and works for a minute to hide his grin, even though he's still shivering hard enough that his teeth hurt.

But still... ]

...Okay, clue me in. Are we working this in civvies?

[ It's the worst kind of rule-breaking, not matching Batman. ]